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HANDY    INFORMATION    SERIES. 

Uniform   l8mo.     Cloth. 

FACTS  I  OUGHT  TO  KNOW  ABOUT  THE  GOV- 
ERNMENT OF  MY  COUNTRY.  By  William  H. 
Bartlett. 

HANDY  DICTIONARY  OF  PROSE  QUOTATIONS. 
Edited  by  George  W.  Powers. 

HANDY  DICTIONARY  OF  POETICAL  QUOTA- 
TIONS.     Edited   by  George   W.    Powers. 

IMPORTANT  EVENTS.  A  Book  of  Dates.  Edited 
by  George  W.   Powers. 

THE  MISTAKES  WE  MAKE.  A  Practical  Manual 
of  Corrections.      Edited    by  Nathan    Haskell    Dole. 

WHO'S  THE  AUTHOR?  A  Guide  to  the  Notable 
Works  in  American  Literature.  By  Louis  Harman 
Peet. 

SHAKSPERIAN  SYNOPSES.  Outlines  or  Arguments 
of  all  the  Plays  of  Shakspere.  By  J.  Walker 
McSpadden. 

WORD  COINAGE.      By    Leon   Mead 


PUBLISHED   BY 

THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL  &  CO. 


CROWELL'S     HANDY     IXFOKALATION     SERIES 

now   WORDS    GROW 

A  BRIEF  STUDY  OF  LITEEARY  STYLE, 
SLANG,  AXD  PROVINCIALISMS 

BY 

LEON    MEAD 


NEW  YORK 

THOMAS  Y.   CROWELL   &   CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


COPYBIGHT,   1902  AND  1907, 

By  LEON  MEAD. 


Published  October,  1902. 


"  Wheyi  the  mint  of  the  United  States  coins  dollars  it 
takes  old  coins,  or  bars,  or  metal  fresh  from  the  mine, 
gives  the  right  stamp,  which  is  nothing  but  a  guarantee 
of  lueight  and  fineness,  and  sends  the  coin  out  to  serve  the 
people.  The  mint  does  not  create.  Man  is  not  a  crea- 
tor. When  men  have  need  of  a  new  2vord,  to  name  a 
new  commoditii,  an  act,  or  principle,  they  draw  upon  the 
resources  of  their  ancient  speech,  recast  or  restarnp  some 
old  ivord,  give  it  a  new  birth,  and  send  it  forth  upon  its 
mission. 

'^  Such  new  words,  or  fresh  coinages,  have  a  birthday, 
a  birthplace,  and  a  birthright ;  like  other  children  of 
men,  they  grow  up  iveak  or  strong,  they  migrate,  some- 
times over  luide  areas  ;  occasionally  they  marry  and 
have  offspring  ;  in  the  struggle  of  life  they  wear  off,  like 
coins  ;  and  sooner  or  later  they  are  melted  down  or  die. 
It  is  this  biographical  or  human  element  in  words  and 
phrases  which  constitutes  their  unfailing  interest,  and 
this  interest  appeals  alike  to  plain  people  and  the  greatest 
students.  The  reason  is  obvious.  Words  are  the  mirror 
of  the  people  that  coin  them,  and  they  reflect  the  mind  of 
the  people  rather  better  perhaps  than  architecture  and 
other  visible  monuments,  which  perish  or  vanish.^' — 
From  an  Address  by  Mr.  C.  W.  Ernst  before  the 
Bostonian  Society,  1896. 


PEEFACE. 


Aware  that  mauy  persons,  glancing  at  the 
cover,  but  not  wasting  their  precious  time  in 
reading  this  book,  may  misjudge  it  from  its  title 
as  having  a  meretricious  design,  the  author  has- 
tens to  assure  all  possible  readers  that  no  new 
words  have  been  made  expressly  for  it.  The 
title,  too,  is  a  somewhat  awkward  compound,  but 
there  seems  to  be  no  other  term  so  availal)le  for 
my  present  purpose. 

While  it  is  realized  that  the  fertile  soil  of  the 
subject  has  scarcely  more  than  been  scratched, 
there  is  some  consolation  in  the  fact  that  all  the 
data  could  not  be  compressed  within  the  limits  of 
these  pages.  Since  the  first  draft  of  this  book 
was  finished  a  work  has  appeared,  bearing  the 
title  of  Sematics:  Studies  in  the  Science  of  Mean- 
ing, from  the  learned  pen  of  Michel  Breal,  Pro- 
fessor of  Comparative  Grammar  at  the  College  de 
France,  an  admirable  translation  of  which  has 
been  made  bv  Mrs.  Henrv  Cust,  and  for  which 


VI  .  PREFACE. 

J.  P.  Postgate,  Professor  of  Comparative  Philol- 
ogy at  University  College,  London,  has  written  a 
notable  preface. 

This  work,  whose  timely  appearance  after  more 
than  thirty  years  of  research  is  in  itself  an  event, 
gives  weighty  emphasis  to  the  manifold  uncertain- 
ties of  etymology  and  to  the  need  of  more  psycho- 
logic analysis  in  the  study  of  words.  Professor 
Breal  doubtless  has  blazed  the  way  for  future 
explorers  in  the  wilderness  of  philology.  He  gets 
the  term  sematics  from  the  verb  semaino,  to 
*' signify,"  in  opposition  to  phonetics,  the  science 
of  sounds.  Professor  Postgate  proposes  *'  to  call 
the  expression  of  a  single  idea  or  notion  a  rheme, 
from  rema,  'a  thing  said,'  and  to  distinguish  the 
expressions  of  qualifications  and  connections  of 
such  rhemes  by  calling  them  epirrhemes,  though, 
as  a  general  term,  rheme  may  serve  for  both.  If 
these  terms  be  approved  of,  I  should  propose  to 
call  our  science  Rhematology,  or  the  study  of 
rhemes."  The  terms  proposed  by  these  two 
scholars  have  about  equal  chances  of  a  long  and 
useful  career,  but  in  any  event  they  are  of  far 
less  importance  than  the  promising  field  of  in- 
quiry they  represent. 

A  few  years  ago  the  present  writer  began  a 
magazine   article  on  Word-Coinage,  with  no  in- 


TREFACE.  Vll 

teution  of  extending  it  into  a  series  for  publication 
in  book  form.  But,  like  a  snowball  rolled  in  its 
own  cohesive  substance,  the  work  grew  until  it 
reached  dimensions  sufficiently  large  for  a  vol- 
ume. The  task  was  a  practical  and  compara- 
tively simple  one.  It  did  not  require  the  lin- 
guistic attainments  of  a  Cardinal  Mezzofanti. 
Perseverance  and  patience  were  necessary,  and 
correspondence  with  many  authors,  some  of  whom, 
let  it  be  confidentially  whispered,  feel  their 
mental  oats  as  much  as  do  horses  the  earth- 
grown  variety.  These  worthies  do  not  hesitate 
to  concoct  a  lingo,  conveniently  called  and  some- 
times by  mere  courtesy  accepted,  by  critics  as 
dialect ;  but  in  the  matter  of  new  words  they 
deny  all  responsibility.  To  coin  words  is  a  sin, 
say  some  of  them  ;  jothers  call  the  act  a  crime, 
and  many  who  have  been  culprits  in  this  direc- 
tion would  forget  the  fact. 

Yet  the  evidences  of  their  beneficence,  in  a  few 
cases,  their  enterprise  in  others,  their  rashness  in 
still  others,  abound  in  their  published  works,  and 
if  I  were  sure  of  living  three  or  four  hundred 
years  on  this  footstool  of  the  Almighty,  I  should 
like  no  better  job  than  going  through  their  books 
and  finding  their  verbal  oflTspring  and  colloca- 
tions ;  but  not  flattering  myself  that  I  shall  be 


Vlll  PREFACE. 

any  phenomenon  of  longevity,  this  method  is,  of 
course,  not  feasible. 

Fortunately,  all  authors  are  not  reticent  on  this 
subject,  and  what  they  have  been  so  kind  as  to 
give  me  is  transcribed  for  the  reader  in  a  popular 
way,  and  without  pretensions  to  vast  learning. 
At  the  outset,  however,  I  do  not  wish  to  be  mis- 
understood. Personally,  I  am  not  in  sympathy 
with  the  practice  of  any  writer  who  coins  voca- 
bles merely  to  exploit  his  cleverness.  Promis- 
cuous verbal  ^  inventions  which  have  no  rea- 
son d'etre  are  usually  as  short-lived  as  they  are 
detestable.  The  English  language,  however, 
though  it  now  contains  many  thousands  of  more 
words  than  any  other  one  language  on  the  globe, 
and  a  host  of  words  that  could  well  be  spared, 
has  by  no  means  reached  its  limits  of  normal 
growth  and  expansion. 

AVhile  we  have  a  superabundance  of  synonyms, 
we  doubtless  lack  words  that  express  the  finest 
nuances  of  meaning,  such  as  the  French  language 
possesses.  These  words  will  creep  into  our  speech 
in  time  and  become  an  integral  and  ornate  part 
of  it;    in  many  cases  they  will   be    assimilated 

1  Throughout  this  book  "verbal"  is  used  chiefly  in 
its  secondary  sense,  as  having  to  do  with  written  as  well 
as  oral  words. 


PREFACE.  IX 

from  the  French,  German,  and  other  living  lan- 
guages, and  the  rest  will  be  sul)stantially  our  own 
mintage,  though  largely  based,  I  hope,  on  vigor- 
ous Anglo-Saxon  roots. 

Leading  up  to  the  subject  proper  are  three 
chapters  which  may  be  deemed  essential  stepping- 
stones  to  a  correct  understanding  of  a  coined 
word.  And  following  the  chapters  dealing  with 
neologisms  are  certain  considerations  on  slang, 
provincialisms,  etc.,  w^hich  are  more  closely  allied 
to  the  general  theme  than  might  be  casually 
supposed. 


COXTE^S^TS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

Preface  v 

I.     Introduction 1 

II.     AVoRDS  AND  Literary  Style    ....  19 

III.  Fof^TER  Word.-?,  Yari.\nt.>^,  and  By-prod- 

rcTS  • 53 

IV.  The  Conscious  Invention  of  Words    .  66 
Y.     Neologisms  by  Lrtng    American  Au- 
thors      78 

VI.     Xeologisms  {Continued) 95 

VII.     Neologisms           "            ........  110 

VIII.     Neologisms           "            126 

IX.    Neologisms          "            141 

X.     Slang 161 

XI.     PRO^^NCTALLSMS  and  Americanese     .    .  192 

XII.     Some  Verbal  Curios 211 

XIII.  Language  and  Cultuhe 220 

XIV.  Co^-CLUSION 251 

Index 269 

xi 


WORD-COINAGE. 


CHAPTER   I. 

INTRODUCTION. 

It  has  been  stated  that  there  are  three  thou- 
sand English  words  not  to  be  found  in  any 
dictionary.  My  own  investigations  would  lead 
to  the  inference  that  there  are  at  least  thrice 
that  many.  Science  constantly  requires  new 
words  to  designate  and  describe  her  new  dis- 
coveries, appliances,  and  processes  ;  hence  it  may 
be  said  that  the  vocabularies  of  all  civilized 
nations  are  increasing — chiefly  in  technical  words, 
which  the  work  of  the  chemist,  the  electrician, 
the  machinist,  etc.,  renders  necessary. 

It  is  said  that  the  late  John  W.  Keeley,  of 
undesirable  fame  in  connection  ^vith  the  myth  of 
perpetual  motion,  invented  some  fifteen  hundred 
spurious  and  pseudo-scientific  words  and  terms, 
which,  in  a  layman's  ears,  had  a  plausible  sound. 
How  thankful  we  should  be  that  these  mongrel 
words  are  not  likely  to  become  "naturalized," 
as  Lord  Chesterfield  once    said  of  other  words. 

1 


I  WORD-COINAC4E. 

Americans  have  enough  of  a  difficult  task  in 
memorizing  the  fairly  or  wholly  legitimate  coin- 
ages that  science,  art,  fashion,  new  ideas,  names 
of  men,  foreign  intercourse,  national  movements, 
Orientalisms,  and  slang  press  upon  them. 

Some  of  the  most  facile  as  well  as  boldest 
writers  in  the  guild  of  American  letters  to-day 
have  never  coined  any  words.  They  do  not 
believe  in  such  expedients.  They  say  that  the 
English  language  of  8hakes})eare,  Burke,  Washing- 
ton Irving,  and  Kuskin  is  good  enough  for  them. 

This  is  the  purist's  ix>int  of  view,  and  purists 
have  a  {perfect  right  to  their  opinions.  But 
supjx)se  all  men  assumed  this  inflexil)le  attitude ; 
then,  indeed,  our  language  would  be  at  a  stand- 
still ;  it  would  become  a  stagnant  reservoir. 

As  a  matter  of  fi\ct,  Shakespeare  coined  many 
words,  and  things  of  this  kind  probably  may  be 
traced  to  the  other  three  men  just  cited,  as  they 
certainly  can  be  to  hundreds  of  great  writers. 
The  derivative  "Gothamite"  was  first  employed 
by  Irving  in  the  Salmagundi  paj>ers  ;  and  Burke 
anglicized  at  least  one  French  word,  to  say 
nothing  of  some  of  his  slovenly  comix)unds. 

There  is  a  fjishion  in  words  as  in  dress  and 
other  things.  Certain  words  come  curiously  into 
vogue,  we  know  not  just  how,  and  are  |X)pular 
for  a  time  until  their  very  triteness  ^  drives  them 
into  the  obsolete  list.  In  the  course  of  two  or 
three    generations    many    of  them    are    revived. 

^  "Words  wear  theinsolves  out  by  overuse." — 
Brtuider  Matthews. 


INTRODUCTION.  6 

Pope    has  stated    the  case  better   than    any  one 
else  in  the  familiar  lines : 

"  In  words  as  in  fashions  the  same  rule  cloth  hold, 
Alike  fantastic  if  too  new  or  old; 
Be  not  the  tii*st  by  whom  the  new  is  tried, 
Nor  yet  the  last  to  lay  the  old  aside." 

This  dictum  may  influence  the  judicious  and 
conservative  jugglers  of  our  mother-tongue. 
When  society  takes  up  an  expressive  slang  word 
you  will  find  your  fashionable  author  doing  like- 
wise, without  bothering  about  its  antecedents  or 
jx^digree.  Doctor  Murray,  in  an  address  in 
I^ndon  before  the  I^hilological  Society,  not  long 
ago,  said  : 

"  Words  were  constantly  cropping  up  in  Eliza- 
l)ethan  times  of  which  notliing  was  known,  of 
which  nothing  cognate  could  be  found  in  any 
foreign  language.  x\fter  the  discovery  of  San- 
scrit it  was  fondly  sup|X)sed  that  Aryan  roots 
existed  (if  they  could  be  found)  for  all  words, 
but  that  was  certainly  not  true  of  all  Eng- 
lish words.  There  were  cases  in  which  the 
closest  and  most  immediate  inquiry  could  not  dis- 
cover the  origin  of  modern  words.  For  ex- 
ample, the  word  'dude'  suddenly  appeared  in 
America,  and,  though  investigation  was  made 
within  a  few  weeks  of  the  recognition  of  the 
word,  no  one  could  say  how  it  originated.  It 
came  epidemically,  so  to  speak,  and  it  has 
remained." 

Contrary  to  this  opinion,  both  the  Century  and 


4  WORD-COINAGE. 

Standard  Dictionaries  ascribe  a  London  origin  to 
the  word,  which  they  identify  with  the  "aesthetic 
movement,"  the  "lily  in  the  hand"  idiocy,  in  the 
early  eighties  of  the  last  centnry.  Recently 
Professor  Walter  W.  Skeat  undertook  to  trace 
"  dude "  back  to  some  German  dialect.  He 
found  in  Low  German,  dudeldop,  dudendop,  or 
dudelkop,  a  simpleton  or  sleepyhead,  and  then 
in  East  Frisian,  duddig,  stupid,  and  duddigheid 
and  dudden  and  duddern,  to  be  drowsy,  and  in 
Dutch,  dodderig.  He  assumes  the  root  to  be 
Tod,  the  English  "death,"  and  cites  many  Eng- 
lish words,  in  common  use  and  in  dialect,  as 
connected  with  that  root — dother,  dote,  doddy, 
doddle,  dawdle,  duddle,  all  haying  the  sense  of 
stupidity  or  slowness.  "Neither,"  adds  the 
learned  Professor,  "should  we  miss  the  vSwedish 
dialect,  dodolga  or  dodolja,  of  which  the  exact 
sense  is  dawdler."  In  Grimm's  Deutsche 
Mythologie  another  Englishman  has  found  the 
word  dod,  meaning  coxcomb.  Thus  a  word  less 
than  twenty  years  old  may  proye  a  yery  will-o'- 
the-wisp  to  such  philologists  as  Professor  William 
D\yight  Whitney,  Dr.  G.  P.  G.  Scott,  Professor  F. 
A.  March,  Jr.,  and  Professor  Edward  S.  Sheldon. 
But  the  scales  of  reasonable  presumption  are 
tipped  in  fayor  of  Dr.  Murray's  theory,  and  the 
common  impression  among  most  people  on  both 
sides  of  the  Atlantic  is  that  the  word  "dude"  is 
essentially  American. 

Nothing  better  illustrates  the  capriciousness  in 
public  taste  than  the    shiftings   of   meaning  in 


INTRODUCTION.  0 

words  by  use.  It  is  said  that  the  slang  word 
"spread"  originated  at  Cambridge  University. 
It  did  not  imply  a  profuse  feast,  however,  but  a 
|X)or  one,  spread  over  the  table  to  make  a  show. 
Such  changes  of  signification  come  under  the 
head  of  what  Profeesm'  Breal  calls  the  pejorative 
tendency  of  words.  The  Anglo-Saxon  saelig, 
answering  to  the  E«^ish  silly,  meant  originally 
"happy,  tranquil,  inoffensive."  One  meaning 
of  smart  (Schmerz  in  German;  has  become 
synonymous  with  "sprightly,  lively,  pretty." 
"Brave"  once  meant  "regret,"  "admirable" 
meant  "surprising,"  "imp"  meant  "island,"  "to 
be  amused"  meant  "to  be  occupied,"  "novelist" 
meant  an  "innovator,"  "pomp"  meant  a  "pro- 
cession," and  so  on. 

Meanings  alter  even  in  scientific  words. 
Hydrogen  was  named  from  the  Greek  hudor, 
water,  and  gennao,  to  generate.  Oxygen  is  just 
as  essential  in  the  formation  of  water  as  is 
hydrogen  ;  for  the  composition  of  water  is  H^,0 
— two  parts  hydrogen  and  one  part  oxygen. 
Hydrogen  is  an  essential  part  of  all  acids,  and, 
strictly  speaking,  therefore,  should  be  called 
oxygen. 

Oxygen  was  named  by  Lavoisieur,  the  founder 
of  modern  chemistry,  in  1776,  from  oxus,  mean- 
ing sharp,  and  gennao,  because  he  supposed  that 
oxygen  was  an  essential  part  of  every  acid ; 
hence  the  name  "acid  (sharp  or  sour)  maker." 
The  German  word  for  oxygen  is  Sctuersfoff, 
meaning    an    acid   or   sour   substance — oxygen 


6  WORD-COINAGE. 

Since  the  time  of  Lavoisieur,  who  was  a  victim 
of  the  French  Revolution,  having  been  guillo- 
tined in  1794,  science  has  demonstrated  that 
many  acids  may  exist  without  oxygen  in  their 
composition,  e.  g,,  hydrochloric,  hydrobromic, 
hydrofluoric,  etc.  Tomlinson  says  :  "  The  word 
oxygen  is  too  deeply  rooted  in  scientific  nomen- 
clature to  be  safely  removed  ;  but  it  may  be 
taken  as  a  remarkable  instance  of  an  abiding 
word  which  changed  its  original  meaning  within 
comparatively  a  short  period  after  its  introduction." 

The  standard  quality  of  many  words  has 
always  been  disputed  by  certain  critics,  who 
object  to  their  admission  into  the  language  as 
being  without  proper  authority.  Such  words  as 
"forestall,"  "fain,"  "scathe,"  "askance,"  "em- 
bellish," and  "dapper"  were  objected  to  in 
Spenser's  day,  but  they  somehow  gained  a  foot- 
ing and  have  kept  it.  A  number  of  Chaucer's 
words,  viz.,  "transcend,"  "bland,"  "sphere," 
"blithe,"  "franchise,"  "carve,"  "anthem,"  were 
considered  obsolete  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
but  one  by  one  they  were  revived  and  are  in  the 
best  of  standing  at  the  present  day.  Also  in 
that  epoch  critics  rejected  as  obsolete  the  words 
"plumage,"  "tapestry,"  "tissue,"  "ledge," 
"trenchant,"  "resource,"  "villainy,"  "strath," 
"thrill,"  "grisly,"  "yelp,"  "kirtle,"  "dovetail" 
— all  of  which  are  now  indispensable.  The 
word  "  encyclopedia "  was  unknown  to  Bacon, 
so  he  used   the  clumsy  term   "circle  learning." 

Fulke    branded    as    inadmissible    the   words 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

'' neophyte,"  "homicide,"  ''scandal,"  "destruc- 
tion," "tunic,"  "despicable,"  "rational."  In 
Hevlin's  Observations  on  V Estrancje  s  History 
of  Charles  11.  (published  in  1658j  the  follow- 
ing words  were  censured  :  "  Oblique,"  "  radiant," 
"adoption,"  "caress,"  "amphibious,"  "hori- 
zontal," "concede,"  "articulate,"  "destination," 
"ocular,"  "compensate,"  "complicated,"  "ad- 
ventitious." 

The  Kev.  Dr.  Burro wes  (afterward  Dean  of 
Cork),  in  an  "Essay  on  the  Style  of  Doctor 
Johnson,"  published  in  the  first  volume  of  the 
Transactions  of  the  Royal  Irish  Society  (1787), 
complains  of  certain  words  like  "resuscita- 
tion," "orbity,"  "volant,"  "fatuity,"  "divari- 
cate," "asinine,"  "narcotic,"  "vulnerary,"  "em- 
pireumatic,"  "papilionaceous,"  and  many  others 
of  the  same  stamp  which  "abound  in  and  dis- 
grace" the  pages  of  Johnson's  dictionary — not- 
withstanding the  compiler's  claim  that  he  has 
rarely  admitted  into  it  any  word  not  author- 
ized by  former  writers.  And  Burrowes  asks 
where  authorities  are  to  be  sought  for  these 
words  as  well  as  "  for  '  obtund,'  '  disruption,' 
'sensory,'  or  'panoply,'  all  occurring  in  the 
short  compass  of  a  single  essay  in  the  Rambler  f 
or  for  'cremation,'  'horticulture,'  'germination,' 
and  '  decussation,'  within  a  few  pages  of  his  Life 
of  Browne  f  They  may  be  found,  perhaps,  in 
the  works  of  former  writers,  but  they  make  no 
part  of  the  English  language.  They  are  the 
illegitimate  offspring  of  learning  by  vanity." 


8  WORD-COINAGE. 

To  this  John  Wilson  Croker,  in  his  edition  of 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  answers  that  by  refer- 
ring to  Johnson's  own  dictionary  Dr.  Burrowes 
would  "  have  found  good  authorities  for  almost 
every  one  of  them  ;  for  instance,  for  '  resuscita- 
tion,' Milton  and  Bacon  are  quoted  ;  for  '  volant,' 
Milton  and  Phillips;  for  'fatuity,'  Browne;  for 
'germination,'  Bacon,  and  so  on.  But  although 
these  authorities  which  Dr.  Burrowes  might  have 
found  in  the  dictionary  are  a  sufficient  answer  to 
his  question,  let  it  be  observed  that  many  of 
these  words  were  in  use  in  more  familiar  authors 
than  Johnson  chose  to  quote,  and  that  the 
majority  of  them  are  now  become  familiar,  which 
is  sufficient  proof  that  the  English  language  has 
not  considered  them  as  illegitimate." 

Boswell  himself  naively  says :  "  Johnson 
assured  me  that  he  had  not  taken  upon  himself 
to  add  more  than  four  or  five  words  to  the  Eng- 
lish language,  of  his  own  formation ;  and  he 
was  very  much  offended  at  the  general  license, 
by  no  means  modestly  taken  in  his  time,  not 
only  to  coin  new  words,  but  to  use  words  in 
senses  quite  different  from  their  established 
meaning,  and  those  frequently  very  fantastical." 

In  his  great  undertaking  Johnson  was  beset 
by  many  difficulties  which  do  not  hamper  the 
lexicographer  of  to-day.  For  one  thing,  ety- 
mology in  a  scientific  sense  was  as  yet  non- 
existent, and  so  was  archaeology  —  a  science 
which,  though  less  than  one  hundred  years  old, 
has  thrown  so  much  light  on  the  study  of  Ian- 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

guages.  To  show  his  not  too  exalted  opinion  of 
his  task  he  defined  a  lexicographer  to  l^e  "a 
harmless  drudge  "  in  his  dictionary.  For  a  long 
time  he  shared  the  common  illusion  that  by 
making  a  catalogue  of  its  words  a  language 
might  be  fixed  for  good  and  all.  But  when  his 
completed  work  appeared  he  explained  very 
sensibly  in  his  preface  the  vanity  of  any  such 
expectation.  He  said  it  would  be  absurd  to 
imagine  that  a  language  should  remain  un- 
altered which  repeats  all  human  thoughts  and 
feelings  that  in  themselves  were  constantly 
changing.  And  in  another  place  he  declared  : 
"  I  am  not  so  lost  in  lexicography  as  to  forget 
that  words  are  the  daughters  of  earth,  and  that 
things  are  the  sons  of  heaven." 

In  his  very  readable  Biography  of  Samuel 
Johnson  Leslie  Stephen  remarks :  "  To  collect 
all  the  words  in  the  language,  to  define  their 
meanings  as  accurately  as  might  be,  to  give  the 
obvious  or  whimsical  guesses  at  etymology  sug- 
gested by  previous  writers,  and  to  append  a  good 
collection  of  illustrative  passages  was  the  sum  of 
his  aml)ition.  Any  systematic  training  of  the 
historical  processes  by  which  a  particular  lan- 
guage had  been  developed  was  unknown,  and  of 
course  the  result  could  not  be  anticipated.  The 
work,  indeed,  required  a  keen  logical  faculty  of 
definition  and  wide  reading  of  the  English 
literature  of  the  two  preceding  centuries  ;  but 
it  could  of  course  give  no  play  for  the  higher 
faculties  on  points  of  scientific  investigation.     A 


10  WORD-COINAGE. 

dictionary  iu  Johnson's  sense  was  the  highest 
kind  of  work  to  which  a  journeyman  could  be 
set,  but  it  was  still  work  for  a  journeyman,  not 
for  an  artist.  He  was  not  adding  to  literature, 
but  providing  a  useful  implement  for  future  men 
of  letters." 

Home  Tooke,  than  whom  there  has  been  no 
closer  student  of  the  English  language,  called 
Johnson's  dictionary  a  disgrace  to  the  English 
people.  It  was  far  from  that,  but  it  may  be 
said  that  the  facilities  for  making  acceptable 
dictionaries  have  vastly  improved  since  John- 
son's day.  Whether  the  wisest  methods  have 
kept  pace  with  these  facilities  is  another  story. 

The  member  of  a  New  York  publishing  house 
which  has  brought  out  a  large  dictionary  informed 
me  that  no  word  was  included  in  its  vocabulary 
that  has  not  received  the  sanction  of  literary 
usage,  that  being  taken  as  the  essential  guarantee 
for  its  inclusion  in  the  work.  He  has  no  knowl- 
edge of  any  newly  coined  words  inserted  in  it, 
though  a  very  large  number  of  words  are  to  be 
found  there  that  are  not  to  be  found  in  any  other 
dictionary,  such  as  tabloid,  filofloss,  etc.  But 
we  should  not  place  implicit  confidence  in  that 
commercial  spirit  of  our  age  which  bases  the 
value  of  a  dictionary  on  the  fact  that  it  contains 
fifty  thousand  more  words  than  any  other  ever 
issued  in  the  English  language.  The  question 
should  be,  Are  they  fit  words?  for  on  this  point 
alone  is  to  be  decided  the  real  merit  of  any  dic- 
tionary. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 1 

From  now  onward  into  the  indefinite  future 
all  consciously  evolved  words  should  be  known 
in  a  more  intimate  and  personal  way — that  is,  we 
should  know  who  are  their  authors  and  when  and 
in  what  circumstances  they  are  born.  This  must 
prove  an  attractive  line  of  work  for  students  of 
sematics.  And  here  arise  the  questions,  What 
constitutes  a  new  word  ?  and  how  is  it  formed  ? 

Compounds  are  generally  recognized  as  stand- 
ing in  the  same  position  as  new  words.  Breal 
makes  a  new  acceptation  equivalent  to  a  new 
word.  This  author  also  calls  attention  to  the 
well-attested  but/somewhat  surprising  fact  that 
modern  language!r*have  borrowed  the  suffixes 
most  frequently  in  use.  "Thus,  Greek  has 
helped  us  to  form  words  in  -ism,  such  as  optim- 
ism, socialism  ;  in  -isf,  such  as  artist,  florist ;  in 
ise  (or  ize),  such  as  authorize,  fertilize.  German 
has  furnished  the  suffix  -ard,  as  in  the  French 
vantard,  bavard,  the  English  dastard,  coward, 
bastard;  Italian,  the  suffix  -esque,  as  in  gigan- 
tesque,  romanesque,  picturesque^ 

There  are  hundreds  of  prefixes  and  suffixes, 
and  all  have  a  more  or  less  definite  trend 
of  meaning  in  themselves.  Some  are  intensive, 
others  negative  ;  some  show  quality  and  relation ; 
others  have  little  apparent  effect  on  the  significa- 
tion, but  they  lack  the  marrow  and  sinew  of  root 
words.  They  are  the  extremities  of  the  verbal 
body ;  not  its  heart  and  vital  organs. 

Within  itself  the  English  language  no  longer 
has,  as  aforetime,  the  resources  out  of  which  new 


12  WOED-COINAGE. 

words  may  be  formed.  For  this  reason  foreign 
words  are  impressed  into  service  and  often  receive 
such  Saxon  prefixes  as  he,  un,  mis,  under,  over, 
after,  out;  or  such  Saxon  formative  suffixes  as 
ness,  dam,  hood,  ship,  less,  Jul,  some,  ish.  French 
prefixes  (some  of  them  more  remotely  Latin)  also 
are  used,  as  en,  dis,  re,  inter,  trans,  or  French 
formative  suffixes,  as  ance,  aye,  ment,  enj,  ity,  let, 
ess,  able,  eons,  ative,  etc.  Separate  particles  like 
up,  off,  by,  to,  etc.,  assist  in  the  patchwork,  but 
the  making  of  words  wholly  out  of  Anglo-Saxon 
material  in  these  days  is  quite  an  unheard-of 
thing.  It  would  not  be  an  impossible  feat  by 
any  means,  but  we  English-speaking  people  have 
been  taking  academic  terms  from  the  Latin, 
Greek,  and  other  languages  for  so  many  years 
that  it  has  become  a  silly  habit.  Inherent  Anglo- 
Saxon  elements,  therefore,  compose  but  scantily 
our  neologisms,  and  more's  the  pity. 

Frequent  are  adverbial  formations  with  prepo- 
sitions like  2)ro  and  con.  Un  is  important  Mt  may 
be  prefixed  to  most  English  adjectives,  to\fenote 
the  absence  of  the  quality  designated  by  the 
adjective,  as  unmindful,  untaught,  unicept,  etc.,  and 
to  a  limited  class  of  nouns  and  verbs.  In  the 
case  of  a  few  nouns,  "un"  expresses  "the  absence 
or  the  contrary  of  that  which  the  noun  signifies, 
as  imbelief,  undress,  unrest,  and  the  like" ;  in  the 
case  of  certain  verbs  it  expresses  "the  contrary, 
and  not  the  sinrple  negative,  of  the  action  indi- 
cated by  the  verb// 

The  preposition  under,  as  a  prefix  has  numer- 


INTRODUCTION.  13 

ous  figurative  uses.  Be  is  an  inseparable  parti- 
cle in  the  composition  of  words  denoting  return, 
repetition,  iteration.  The  termination  of  most  of 
the  early  Anglo-Saxon  infinitives  was  an  or  ian, 
heon,  to  be,  become,  being  one  of  the  few  exce|> 
tions.  These  verbs  were  formed  from  nouns, 
sometimes  from  adjectives,  and  at  a  later  period 
were  compounded,  as  utrjan,  to  go  out,  from  ut, 
out,  and  fjan,  to  go.  Though  the  Anglo-Saxon 
has  no  future  tense,  this  missing  form  was  some- 
times eked  out  by  the  use  of  the  auxiliaries  xc'dle 
and  sceal  as  in  English,  to  express  the  future, 
"  but  generally,  not  without  the  idea  of  volition, 
or  of  necessity,  which  pro^^erly  belongs  to  those 
words  "  (Professor  Samuel  M.  Shute). 

The  principal  Anglo-Saxon  prefixes  were  em- 
ployed as  follows  :  Un-,  not ;  n-,  not ;  mis-,  un- 
like, defective,  erroneous  ;  wan-,  wanting ;  to-,  to ; 
for-,  negation,  and  sometimes  intensity ;  wi  er-, 
against ;  and-,  again-t ;  ge-  has  a  collective  sense  : 
be-,  sometimes  privative,  sometimes  intensive  ;  ed-, 
again  ;  sin-,  always ;  sam-,  naif ;  aeg-  has  an  inde- 
terminate sense. 

For  the  most  part  the  following  nominal  suf- 
fixes denote  persons :  -a,  -ere,  -end,  -e,  -el,  -ol,  -1, 
-ing,  -ling  (diminutives),  -en,  -estre. 

Suffixes  denoting  state,  condition,  etc.,  include : 
-dom,  -had,  scipe,  lac,  -a,  -u,  -least ;  -ung,  -ing ; 
-nes,  -u,  -eo,  -o,  -els,  -ed,  -m,  -ot,  -d,  -t,  -raden. 

Adjective  suflfixes  are :  -e,  -ig,  -lie,  -isc,  -sum, 
-ol,  -en,  -baere,  -cund,  -iht,  -weard,  -feald,  -leas, 
-wis,  -ern,  -tyme. 


14  WORD-COINAGE. 

Adverbial  suffixes :  -e,  -lice,  -urn,  -on,  -es ; 
-unga,  -inga ;  -an,  -der  ;  -on,  -an,  -r,  -ra,  -e. 

I  append  some  of  the  more  melodious  old  A^i- 
glo-Saxon  adjectives : 

Arful — respectable  ;  favorable. 

Breme,  bryme — renowned. 

Dyrne — bidden. 

Ece — eternal. 

Elfscine — elf-beautiful ;  handsome. 

Ging — young  ;  tender. 

Grimlic — sharp  ;  severe. 

Hador — serene ;  clear. 

Hal,  hael — whole  ;  sound  ;  safe. 

Halig — holy. 

Sarlie — painful ;  sorrowful. 

Imvidda — deceitful ;  wicked. 

Modig — proud  ;  irritable. 

Rof — famous. 

Ruli — rough  ;  hairy. 

Seine — splendid. 

Sel — good  ;  excellent. 

Smylt — serene  ;  gentle. 

Wae — infirm  ;  frail. 

Weor — bad  ;  miserable. 

There  is  plenty  of  justification  for  new  words 
of  the  right  sort.  They  all  have  to  pass  through 
a  probationary  period.  '•  Thinkers  and  philoso- 
phers," says  Breal,  "  have  the  privilege  of  creat- 
ing new  words  which  arrest  attention  by  their 
amplitude  and  by  the  learned  aspect  of  their 
structure.  These  words  pass  into  the  vocabulary 
of  criticism  and  so  gain  currency  among  artists ; 


INTRODUCTION.  15 

but  once  admitted  into  the  studio  of  the  painter 
or  sculptor,  they  speedily  come  forth  in  order  to 
spread  through  the  world  of  industry  and  com- 
merce, which  makes  use  of  them  without  measure 
or  scruple.  So  that  in  a  comparatively  short 
time  the  vocabulary  of  metaphysics  is  helping  to 
nourish  the  language  of  advertisement." 

To  trace  the  lineage  of  many  words  is  simply 
impossible.  They  are  of  the  parvenue  class, 
without  ancestry,  though  they  have  as  near  rela- 
tives in  the  dictionary  as  first  cousins.  If  words 
could  write  their  autobiographies,  what  a  world 
of  secrets  they  might  reveal !  What  a  flood  of 
interest  they  might  turn  on  human  emotion,  pride, 
selfishness,  nobility,  and  all  the  rest  of  it ! 

One  day  the  question  asked  itself  in  my  mind : 
"How  many  of  the  leading  American  authors 
have  invented  one  or  more  words  ?  "  The  query 
haunted  me  with  such  persistence  that  I  finally 
decided  to  learn  from,  the  authors  themselves  how 
far  they  had  ventured  in  word-coinage.  Certain 
American  writers  are  not  mentioned  in  these 
pages  because  their  responses  were  too  personal 
or  too  unworthy  of  them.  Some  well-known 
devotees  of  letters  have  wholly  mistaken  the  spirit 
of  my  inquiries  and  dismissed  the  subject  as 
beneath  their  notice ;  but  it  is  well  worth  their 
attention  as  it  is  mine,  and,  luckily  for  my  inves- 
tigation, people  are  represented  here  whose 
authority  cannot  be  questioned,  though  it  should 
be  frankly  stated  that  the  preponderance  of 
opinion    is    against   the    promiscuous  coining  of 


16  WORD-COINAGE. 

words.  The  couvictions  they  have  expressed  in 
this  matter  should  have  weight  with  all  tyros  iu 
literature  and  serve  to  warn  those  who  have 
passed  through  their  novitiate  against  the 
practice. 

It  is  quite  out  of  the  question  for  any  one 
person  to  keep  track  of  the  new  words,  that,  like 
miniature  meteors,  flash  across  the  horizon  of 
letters.  Many  a  verbal  variant  serves  its  pur- 
pose for  some  special  use,  but  is  not  adopted  into 
general  usage.  Its  j  ustification  is  imbedded,  so  to 
speak,  iu  some  definitive  connection  \^dth  other 
words  for  that  one  occasion.  It  provides  a  norm 
of  meaning  better  than  any  combination  of  words 
could  present.  Alexander  and  C?esar  knew  that 
twelve  feet  of  sand  turns  the  salt  water  of  the  sea 
into  clear  fresh  water.  So  we  should  learn  that 
words,  new  and  old,  filtered  through  the  minds 
of  many  diverse  personalities,  at  last  attain  to 
their  highest  degree  of  purity. 

In  closing  this  chapter  I  ^vish  to  quote  two  or 
three  paragraphs  from  an  article  in  the  Pall  Mall 
Marjazine  by  the  English  critic,  William  Archer, 
on  "The  American  Language."  Mr.  Archer 
says :  "  As  American  life  is  far  more  fertile  of  new 
conditions  than  ours,  the  tendency  towards  neolo- 
gism cannot  but  be  stronger  in  America  than  in 
England.  America  has  enormously  enriched  the 
language,  not  only  with  new^  words,  but  (since 
the  American  mind  is,  on  the  whole,  quicker  and 
wittier  than  the  English)  with  apt  and  luminous 
colloquial  metaphors." 


INTRODUCTION.  ]  7 

Again  he  says:  "America  doubles  and  trebles 
the  number  of  points  at  which  the  English  lan- 
guage comes  in  touch  with  nature  and  life,  and 
is  thM:fif^re  a  great  source  of  strength  and  vital- 
ity. \The  literary  language,  to  be  sure,  rejects  a 
great  deal  more  than  it  absorbs ;  and  even  in  the 
vernacular,  words  and  expressions  are  always 
dying  out  and  being  replaced  by  others  which 
are  somehow  better  adapted  to  the  changing  con- 
ditionsl^  But  though  an  expression  has  not,  in 
the  long  run,  proved  itself  fitted  to  survive,  it 
does  not  follow  that  it  has  not  done  good  service 
in  its  time.  Certain  it  is  that  the  common  speech 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  throughout  the  world  is 
exceedingly  supple,  well  nourished,  and  rich  in 
forcible  and  graphic  idioms  ;  and  a  great  part  of 
this  wealth  it  owes  to  America.  Let  the  purists 
who  sneer  at  Americanisms  think  how  much 
poorer  the  English  language  would  be  to-day  if 
North  America  had  become  a  French  or  Spanish 
instead  of  an  English  continent. 

"I  am  far  from  advocating  a  breaking  down 
of  the  barrier  between  literary  and  vernacular 
speech.  It  should  be  a  porous,  permeable  bul- 
wark, allowing  of  free  filtration  ;  but  it  should 
be  none  the  less  distinct  and  clearly  recognized. 
Xor  do  I  recommend  an  indiscriminate  hospitality 
to  all  the  linguistic  inspirations  of  the  American 
fancy.  All  I  say  is  that  neologisms  should  be 
judged  on  their  merits,  and  not  rejected  with 
contumely  for  no  better  reason  than  that  they  are 
new  and  (presumably)  American." 


18  WORD-COINAGE. 

All  this  is  so  conspicuously  true,  and  comes  so 
unexpectedly  from  an  authoritative  English 
writer,  that  it  deserves  the  widest  publicity  in 
this  country.  Many  scholars  do  not  generally 
approve  of  neologisms,  though  they  cannot  tell 
how  language  is  to  grow  or  ever  has  grown  with- 
out them ;  for  every  word  must  have  been  a 
neologism  originally,  even  the  verb  to  be.\^\nng, 
as  we  shall  see,  has  played  a  remarkable  part  in 
the  enrichment   of  our  Indo-European  vocabu- 

QWhat  we  call  "pure  English"  now  is  a  very 
composite  photograph,  made  up  of  the  lines  and 
outlines  of  thousands  of  linguistic  faces^nd  I  do 
not  see  where  the  dissecting  knife  would  stop  if 
with  it  we  endeavored  to  anatomize  this  infinitely 
compound  structure. 


CHAPTER   11. 

WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE. 

Oh,  list,  ye  decadents  of  lyric  skill : 

Dip  froni  your  hearts  the  ruddy  drops  of  thought, 

And  with  them  life's  blank  pages  bravely  fill 

In  words  of  rare  mosaic  beauty  wrought ; 

Nor  think  yourselves  immortal  masters  till 

Your  Art  with  Gods  own  messages  is  fraught. 

Men  of  genius  have  been  guilty  of  some  queer 
word-coinages.  Keats  coined  the  impossible  word 
yearnful;  but  this  was  not  his  gravest  offense. 
The  Quarterly  Review  of  September,  1818,  gave 
a  harsh  notice  of  John  Keats'  Endymion,  which 
had  appeared  a  few  months  previously.  This 
periodical  often  has  been  blamed  for  causing  the 
early  death  of  Keats — with  how  much  truth  I 
know  not.  That  portion  of  the  criticism  which 
it  seems  pertinent  to  quote  here  is  as  follows  : 

"  We  now  present  some  of  the  new  words  with 
which,  in  imitation  of  Mr.  Leigh  Hunt,  he  adorns 
our  language : 

"We  are  told  that  turtles  passion  their  voices, 
that  an  arbor  is  nested,  and  a  lady's  locks  are 
gordianed  up;  and,  to  supply  the  place  of  the 
nouns  thus    verbalized,   Mr.   Keats,    with    great 

19 


20  WORD-COINAGE. 

fecundity,  spawns  new  ones,  such  as  men-slugs  and 
human  serpentry,  the  honey-feel  of  bliss,  wives 
prepare  needments,  and  so  forth.  Then  he  has 
formed  new  verbs  by  the  process  of  cutting  off 
their  natural  tails,  the  adverbs,  and  affixing  them 
to  their  foreheads.  Thus,  the  wine  out-sparkled, 
the  multitude  up-followed,  and  night  up-took;  the 
wind  up-blou's,  and  the  hours  are  down-sunken. 
But  if  he  sinks  some  adverbs  in  the  verbs,  he 
compensates  the  language  with  adverbs  and 
adjectives,  which  he  separates  from  the  parent 
stock.  Thus  a  lady  whispers  jittntingly  and  close, 
makes  hushing  sighs,  and  steers  her  skiff  into  a 
ripply  cove,  a  shower  falls  refreshfully,  and  a  vul- 
ture has  a  spjreaded  tail." 

It  is  easy  to  believe  how  a  delicately  balanced 
and  sensitive  nature  like  that  of  Keats  could 
have  been  hurt  by  so  critical  a  cudgeling.  (Still 
more  mawkish  and  violent  strictures  on  his 
work  appeared  in  Blackwood's  Magazine.)  But 
his  name  was  writ  in  something  less  subject  to 
evaporation  than  water,  despite  the  phraseology 
of  his  self-made  epitaph.'  The  mystery  is  that, 
with  so  subtle  a  sense  of  lyric  form,  so  exquisite 
an  apprehension  of  and  delight  in  the  beautiful, 
he  ever  should  have  bodied  forth  his  sublimated 
thoughts  in  any  words  less  nobly  chosen  than  the 
ones  in  his  "Ode  to  a  Grecian  Urn"  or  those  in 
"  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes." 

Perhaps  Keats  suffered  from  the  defects  of  his 
qualities,  as  what  poet  does  not?    In  the  white 

^  "  Here  Hes  one  whose  name  was  writ  in  water." 


WORDS    AXD    LITERARY    STYLE. 


21 


heat  of  compositiou  a  great  deal  of  intellectual 
power  goes  to  waste  in  the  groping  for  rhymes.  In 
fixed  forms  of  versification  the  free  flow  of  inspira- 
tion must  necessarily  be  weakened,  so  that  in  most 
poets  we  find  three  or  more  commonplace  lines  to 
one  of  great  strength  or  consummate  beauty. 

The  late  Eugene  Field  once  told  me  he  had  at 
times  some  parrot  and  monkey  struggles  with  the 
reluctant  muse.  There  were  days,  he  said,  when 
she  was  out  of  sorts  and  ol:)Stiuate,  and  then  the 
mischievous  rhymes  tried  their  best  to  elude  his 
pen.  In  these  emergencies  he  resorted  to  the 
primitive  method  of  audibly  repeating  the  alpha- 
bet of  monosyllables  for  some  rhyming  word  that 
would  fit  and  meet  the  nice  requirements  of  syn- 
tax and  prosody.  For  instance,  if  he  desired  a 
word  rhyming  with  the  termination  at,  he  would 
commence  with  the  first  rhyming  word  bat,  and 
proceed  thus :  brat,  cat,  chat,  fat,  hat,  mat, 
pat,  rat,  slat,  that,  and  so  on.  And  thus  he 
maundered  among  the  plaguey  rhymes  until  he 
made  them  tally  in  sound  and  sense. 

It  was  rather  difficult  to  credit  this  confession, 
and  I  intimated  that  he  must  be  springing  some 
occult  joke  on  me  ;  thereupon  he  solemnly  pro- 
tested that  this  system  of  capturing  recalcitrant 
rhymes  was  a  common  expedient  of  his.  Well, 
training  does  much  for  poets,  as  for  everybody 
else,  and  it  may  be  confidently  stated  that  Mr. 
Field  eventually  brought  his  capricious  muse  to 
terms  and  obliged  her  to  capitulate;  for  what- 
ever may  be  its  other  deficiencies,  his  later  metri- 


22  WORD-COINAGE. 

cal  work  betrays  none  of  those  stilted,  strained, 
mechanical  devices  which  would  indicate  that  he 
persisted  iu  that  crude,  school-boy  method  of  com- 
position. 

Now,  in  free  verse  the  obstacles  to  w^hich  I 
have  referred  are  largely  removed  :  the  poet  may 
fairly  reflect  the  glow  of  his  soul,  instead  of  garn- 
ering the  mere  ashes  of  his  dreams.  This 
accounts  for  the  supreme  power  of  the  Psalms  of 
David,  the  songs  of  Solomon,  the  best  lines  of 
Walt  Whitman.  Yet  it  is  not  every  poet  who 
dares  to  break  away  from  the  trammels  of  pros- 
ody. Genius  is  an  emanation  from  the  divine 
and  may  make  its  own  rules,  in  a  large  measure. 
It  can  play  truant  from  the  rhetorical  orbit  with 
more  or  less  impunity.  It  can  be  so  tempera- 
mental as  to  set  at  defiance  all  accepted  standards. 
But  no  man  of  moderate  gifts  in  poesy  can  be  an 
outlaw  with  safety.  If  he  can  say  nothing  worth 
saying  in  the  established  forms  of  his  art,  is  it 
probable  that  he  will  be  any  more  successful  in 
some  hybrid  stanza  of  his  own  invention  ? 

In  the  professional  career  of  the  late  lamented 
Richard  Hovey  is  to  be  noted  a  poet's  heroic 
struggle  between  the  influences  of  formalism  and 
Walt  Whitmanesque  freedom.  This  struggle  re- 
sulted in  Mr.  Hovey's  compromising  with  both 
of  these  influences.  In  his  last  great  poem, 
Taliesin,  which  he  designates  as  a  masque,  more 
than  thirty  different  verse  forms  are  employed, 
though  not  all  with  equal  charm  or  effect.  His 
Greek  Ionics  and  Alcaics  are  beautifully  wrought, 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  23 

but  in  this  particular  poem  the  nine-accent  iambics 
seem  to  be  the  most  powerfully  employed  of  all 
his  meters. 

His  purpose,  of  course,  in  using  so  many  lyric 
forms  and  varied  rhythms  was  to  provide  the  most 
appropriate  metrical  medium  for  his  thought. 
He  aimed  to  be  unconventional,  and  much  may 
be  said  in  defense  of  free  and  of  even  irregular 
verse  forms.  He  was  no  more  the  slave  of  rules 
than  is  the  bird  ;  hence  he  achieved  naturalness 
by  methods  which  a  fainter-hearted  singer  would 
not  have  touched.  But  Mr.  Hovey  was  in  no 
sense  a  revolutionist  in  thought  or  sentiment. 
He  was  reconciled  to  his  own  microcosm.  It 
was  he  who  wrote  not  long  before  his  young  and 
manly  soul  was  taken  away  from  this  earth  : 

My  soul  melts  like  snow  in  the  waters  of  thy  joy  ; 
Thy  love  is  like  a  white  silence  ; 
The  joy  of  death  is  in  my  soul. 

I  have  mentioned  Whitman.  Ah,  there  was  a 
magician  with  words !  And  when  you  heard 
him  speak,  you  at  once  realized  the  atmosphere 
of  one  to  whom  the  higher  mysteries  had  been 
revealed,  whatever  might  have  been  his  other 
experiences.  Upon  one  occasion  we  were  talk- 
ing, he  and  I,  about  various  studies  to  which  a 
writer  should  devote  himself  "  Rhetoric,"  said 
he,  "is  all  well  enough,  but  beware  lest  the 
rules  dwarf  you  into  a  mere  nonentity.  A  man 
who  feels  the  message  of  life  and  has  something 
to  say  will  find  a  way  of  his  own   to   say   it.     I 


24  WORD-COINAGE. 

hate  to  see  a  chubby,  rosy-cheeked  boy,  all  mirth 
and  animatiou,  pressed  hard  against  the  grind- 
stone of  etiquette  until  he  enters  a  parlor  with  as 
much  austere  dignity  as  his  great  grandfather, 
and  says,  very  primly,  'Of  whom  were  you 
speaking,  mam-ma?'  Such  a  boy,  to  my  mind, 
is  positiyely  nauseating.  God  allows  men  to  be 
boys  first,  so  that  they  can  kick  around  and  cut 
up  all  sorts  of  monkey  shines.  And  when  they 
are  compelled  by  their  parents  to  be  so  sadly 
polite,  it  takes  away  all  their  charm  and  ginger. 
It  is  just  so  with  a  writer,  who,  a  slave  to 
rhetoric  and  such  things,  is  afraid  to  say  that  his 
soul  is  his  own." 

But  it  should  not  be  imagined  that  Whitman 
had  no  respect  for  the  right  word  or  for  sincere 
and  vivid  art.  Says  one  of  his  most  loyal  dis- 
ciples, Horace  L.  Traubel,  editor  of  The  Conserva- 
tor: "■  Whitman  rebelled  against  old  artistic 
forms,  not  because  he  was  averse  to  form,  but 
because  he  desired  free  volition  and  plenty  of 
room.  As  to  form  in  tlie  abstract,  his  was  most 
unmistakable  and  inexorable." 

Another  enthusiastic  admirer  of  the  "good 
gray  poet"  says  that  in  the  absolute  use  of  words 
Whitman  has  few  equals.  You  must  go  else- 
where if  you  want  poetic  tidbits.  What  appears 
in  Whitman  to  be  colossal  egotism,  as  Bayard 
Taylor  called  it,  is  merely  the  expression  of  the 
universal  man,  as  applicable  to  others  as  to  him- 
self; or,  if  you  please,  it  is  an  egotism  so  vast 
that  it  merges  into  otherhood.     William  Dean 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  ZO 

Howells  called  him  "the  apostle  of  the  rough 
aud  imcuuth."  The  answer  to  this  may  be  found 
in  John  Burroughs'  book  on  Whitman,  as  where 
he  says :  "  We  owe  much  to  Emerson.  But 
Emerson  was  much  more  a  made  man  than  was 
Whitman — much  more  the  result  of  secondary 
forces,  the  college,  the  church,  and  of  Xew  Eng- 
land social  and  literary  culture." 

In  another  place  this  same  clear-sighted  lover 
and  interpreter  of  nature  says  :  "  Xo  man  ever 
searched  more  diligently  for  the  right  word — for 
just  the  right  word — than  did  Whitman.  He 
would  wait  for  days  and  weeks  for  the  one  ulti- 
mate epithet.  How  long  he  pressed  the  language 
for  some  word  or  phrase  that  would  express  the 
evening  call  of  the  robin,  and  died  without  the 
sight.  .  .  .  His  matchless  phrases  seem  like 
chance  hits,  so  much  so  that  some  critics  have 
wondered  how  he  happened  to  stumble  upon  them. 
His  verse  is  not  dressed  up,  because  it  has  so  few 
of  the  artificial  adjuncts  of  poetry — no  finery  or 
stuck-on  ornament — nothing  obtrusively  beauti- 
ful or  poetic  ;  and  because  it  bears  itself  with  the 
freedom  and  nonchalance  of  a  man  in  his  every- 
day attire. 

"But  it  is  always  in  a  measure  misleading  to 
compare  language  with  dress,  to  say  that  a  poet 
clothes  his  thought,  etc.  The  language  is  the 
thought ;  it  is  an  incarnation,  not  an  outside  tailor- 
ing. To  improve  the  expression  is  to  improve 
the  thought.  In  the  most  vital  writing  the 
thought  is  nude  :  the  mind  of  the  reader  touches 


26  WORD-COINAGE. 

something  alive  and  real.  When  we  begin  to 
hear  the  rustle  of  a  pompous  vocabulary,  when 
the  man  begins  to  dress  his  commonplace  ideas  up 
in  fine  phrases,  we  have  enough  of  him.  Indeed, 
it  is  only  the  mechanical  writer  who  may  be  said 
to  clothe  his  ideas  with  words ;  the  real  poet 
thinks  through  words." 

To  have  a  complete  grasp  of  the  meaning  of 
the  foregoing  paragraph  is  to  know  what  true 
poetry  is  and  how  to  judge  it.  To  be  sure,  we 
are  not  all  elemental  in  what  our  minds  put  forth. 
Our  intellectual  palates  differ,  and  it  is  a  wise 
dispensation  that  we  are  not  all  alike.  The 
hardy  man  of  the  mountain  best  relishes  coarse, 
substantial  fare ;  the  lazy  epicure  craves  food  that 
is  highly  seasoned  with  condiments  and  currie. 
One  man's  meat  is  another  man's  poison;  one 
man's  honey  is  another  man's  gall.  The  words 
of  some  poems  fall  upon  our  consciousness  like 
the  manna  that  descended  upon  the  Israelites, 
"in  which  were  all  manner  of  tastes  ;  and  every 
one  found  in  it  what  his  palate  was  chiefly  pleased 
with.  If  he  desired  fat  in  it,  he  had  it.  In  it 
young  men  tasted  bread ;  the  old  men  honey ;  and 
the  children  oil." 

If  we  concede  that  great  poets  and  great  ora- 
tors are  born,  not  made,  it  is  nevertheless  wide 
of  the  truth  to  say  that  by  the  mere  force  of  un- 
taught nature  a  man  can  write  a  good  poem  or 
make  a  good  speech.  AYhile  the  power  of  ex- 
pression is  a  gift,  supreme  proficiency  in  literary 
composition,  however  rich   and   varied  may    be 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  27 

one's  endowments,  can  be  gained  only  by  strenu- 
ous and  long-continued  work.  The  study  of 
manuals  of  composition  and  of  formal  treatises 
on  the  art  of  writing  is  an  important  aid  to 
methodical  knowledge ;  but  it  is  absurd  to  believe 
that  rhetorical  rules  alone  will  suffice  to  teach  a 
man  a  flawless  style.  He  may  cultivate  his  sen- 
sibilities and  strengthen  his  mental  faculties  l)y 
discipline ;  but  he  cannot  quicken  the  flow  of  his 
own  ideas  by  the  servile  imitation  of  formulas. 
In  trying  to  be  natural  we  often  end  in  being 
unique;  but  some  men  could  have  a  magnetic 
literary  style  no  more  than  a  magnetic  personal- 
ity.    It  is  not  in  them. 

It  is  a  pathetic  thing  that  many  people  are 
absolutely  incapable  of  telling  a  good  from  a  bad 
poem.  Everything  that  has  jingle  and  rhyme  is 
a  poem  to  them.  They  have  no  sense  of  metrical 
form,  are  mentally  color-blind  to  the  dazzling 
hues  of  words,  and  alike  are  deaf  to  lyric  harmo- 
nies, just  as  many  poor  mortals  cannot  tell  one 
tune  from  another.  But  more  unfortunate  than 
aught  else,  they  are  too  obtuse  to  feel  the  impas- 
sioned throb  of  inspiration.^  They  are  like 
Wordsworth's  Peter  Bell: 

^  "Fair  are  the  flowers  and  the  children,  but  their 
subtle  suggestion  is  fairer, 

Kare  is  the  rosehurst  of  dawn,  but  the  secret  that 
clasps  it  is  rarer ; 

Sweet  the  exultance  of  song,  but  the  strain  that  pre- 
cedes it  is  sweeter, 

And  never  was  poem  yet  writ,  hut  the  meaning  out- 
mastered  the  meter," — Eichard  Realf. 


28  WORD-COINAGE. 

A  primrose  by  a  river's  brim, 
A  yellow  primrose  was  to  him, 
And  it  was  nothing  more. 

What  a  miraculous  contrast  to  this  kind  of 
opacity  is  the  poet's  own  spiritual  apprehension, 
as  voiced  in  his  immortal  ode : 

Our  birth  is  but  a  sleep  and  a  forgetting  ; 
The  soul  that  rises  with  us,  our  life's  Star, 
Hath  had  elsewhere  its  setting, 
And  cometh  from  afar. 

A  good  illustration  of  the  vast  difference  be- 
tween the  mental  attitude  of  the  great  artist 
toward  nature  and  life  and  that  of  the  feckless, 
narrow,  matter-of-fact  mind,  occurs  in  W.  W. 
Story's  two  poems,  Padre  Bandelli  and  Leonardo 
Da  Vinci,  which  I  heartily  commend  to  the 
reader. 

There  are  those  who  say  that  to  be  sure  of 
heaven  we  must  take  heaven  with  us  when  we 
die.  In  an  analogous  way,  what  we  get  out  of 
certain  authors  depends  largely  upon  what  we 
bring  to  them.  There  are  things  in  the  writings 
of  Dante,  Shakespeare,  and  Browning  that  prob- 
ably no  one  comprehends,  though,  in  a  way,  they 
may  be  apprehended.  From  the  world  of  ideals 
many  people  seem  to  be  barred  congenitally. 
And  yet  how  often  w^e  meet  men  and  women  of 
sciolistic  culture  who  pretend  to  be  idealists  !  If 
you  have  lived  In  the  Forest  of  Arden,  like 
Hamilton  W.  Mabie  and  Rosalind,  you  already 
know  the  untold  value  of  insight — not  only  to 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  29 

those  who  produce  works  of  art  and  literature, 
but  to  all  who  would  truly  understand  and  enjoy 
them. 

The  average  writer  soon  learns  his  limitations. 
The  more  he  goes  in  for  exquisite  literary  analy- 
sis, the  better  he  knows  that — 

.     .     .     There  are  some  thoughts  beyond  the  reach 
Of  our  imperfect  speech. 

Because  they  hover  but  vaguely  in  the  back- 
ground of  the  mind.  He  perceives  that  they  are 
well  worth  an  arduous  pursuit,  but  they  elude 
capture ;  they  are  too  volatile  to  hold  in  solution 
of  language.  ]Marie  Bashkirtseff  confided  to  her 
Diary :  "  If  I  took  heed  I  could  write  very  cor- 
rectly ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  certain  incoherent 
thoughts  require  a  perfect  artlessness  of  ex- 
pression." 

To  drift  on  the  current  of  fancy  may  be  all 
right,  when  judgment  is  at  the  helm.  ]\[auy 
writers  depend  upon  the  inspiration  of  the  mom- 
ent and  make  the  best  of  it.  They  bring  to  bear 
upon  very  poor  material  sometimes  the  wizardry 
of  words,  the  little  touches,  which  transform  it 
into  a  thing  of  beauty.  Sitting  down  on  one 
occasion  to  write  a  poem,  without  a  definite  topic 
in  his  mind,  Robert  Burns  began  thus : 

Which  way  the  subject  theme  may  gang, 
Let  time  or  chance  determine  ; 
Perhaps  it  may  turn  out  a  sang — 
Or  probably  a  sermon. 


30  WORD-COINAGE. 

But  the  Promethean  triumphs  of  mountain- 
minded  genius  !  Jean  Paul  says  somewhere  that 
the  conceptions  of  the  greatest  works  of  genius 
came  to  their  authors  like  a  flash.  Of  course,  all 
the  details  were  not  rounded  out  in  one  swift 
revelation,  but  a  series  of  pictures  were  grouped 
together  in  the  mind  by  those  rapid  combinations 
of  which  only  the  imagination  is  capable.  It  is 
probable  that  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey,  the  Divina 
Commedia,  Hamlet,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Faust, 
and  a  few  other  powerful  creations,  so  called, 
were  conceived  in  this  way.  The  theme  or 
motif  of  each  may  be  stated  in  a  single  sentence. 
Why  then  is  it  illogical  to  say  that  the  con- 
ceptions of  such  works  came  in  the  form  of  mere 
titles  or  names  ? 

Rather  difierent  considerations  from  those  sub- 
mitted earlier  in  this  chapter  in  relation  to 
poetry  attach  themselves  to  a  survey  of  the 
methods  and  style  of  our  best  prose  writers. 
When  a  young  writer  takes  a  dislike  to  using 
big,  ungainly  words,  it  ought  to  be,  if  it  isn't,  a 
sign  that  he  is  beginning  to  form  a  proper  style 
of  his  own.  In  our  callow  years  we  shoot  wide 
of  the  mark  in  trying  to  convey  our  ideas — if  in- 
deed we  have  any  worth  writing  out.  Close 
thinking  is  neither  a  trait  nor  a  habit  of  young 
minds.  During  the  period  of  adolescence  we  are 
what  Doctor  Johnson  called  faint  thinkers.  It 
is  next  to  impossible  to  develop  our  mental  nega- 
tives into  faithful  verbal  pictures.  We  commit 
heterophemy   {see  p.   71  j    over  and  over  again. 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  31 

The  logical  faculty  veers  with  every  wind  of 
argument  that  touches  it,  and  is  like  a  fledgling 
bird  that  on  first  trying  its  wings  flutters  breath- 
lessly to  the  ground.  Here  and  there  some  pre- 
cocious lad  like  Pope  lisps  in  numbers  and  the 
numbers  come,  but  even  such  exceptions  may 
not  be  taken  very  seriously.  Premature  genius, 
like  premature  fruit,  soon  decays  and  dies. 

Even  the  ripest  scholarship  may  not  insure  to 
a  person  a  literary  style  at  once  clear  like 
Macaulay's  and  distinguished  like  John  Morley's. 
Kearly  every  vestige  of  the  once  voluminous 
works  of  Varro,  the  most  learned  of  the  Romans, 
perished  because  they  were  destitute  of  art. 
The  Greeks  were  the  makers  of  style  in  writing. 
The  art  of  putting  things  so  that  the  words  for 
which  they  stand  will  impress,  persuade,  and 
convince  is  the  secret  of  style,  so  far  as  it  can  be 
defined  in  a  nutshell.  Style  *is  a  means  and  not 
an  end.  Some  women  have  the  knack  of  lend- 
ing charm  to  their  attire,  though  it  be  very 
simple,  by  the  way  they  carry  themselves. 
They  know  how  to  wear  their  clothes.  A  few 
feminine  touches  will  work  magic  in  the  general 
effect  of  the  most  common  raiment.  On  the 
other  hand,  how  many  women  do  we  see  who 
have  a  dowdy  or  slovenly  or  bizarre  appearance, 
no  matter  how  costly  and  elaborate  may  be  their 
costume.  There  is  a  vulgarity  in  the  superflui- 
ties of  dress  and  ornament  which  reflects  on  the 
good  taste  of  the  wearer. 

So   it   is   in    writing.      The    shoddy    phrase. 


32  WORD-COINAGE. 

monger  soon  makes  himself  ridiculous  to  all 
sensible  readers.  The  lettered  snob,  the  intel- 
lectual dandy,  soon  betrays  himself;  his  mimic 
fire  gives  one  the  chills ;  his  headlong  fluency 
leads  him  into  ludicrous  pitfalls.  The  cheap, 
third-rate  quidnunc  always  tries  to  hide  his  de- 
fects or  lack  of  thought  l^ehind  a  showy  screen  of 
alien,  perhaps  effete,  words  that  only  befog  his 
own  fat  wits. 

The  late  Stephen  Crane's  first  literary  success 
was  paradoxical  in  that  he  graphically  described 
scenes  of  war  and  carnage  in  which  he  had  had 
no  personal  experience.  The  Red  Badge  of 
Courage  won  plaudits  from  veterans  in  military 
technique  for  its  accuracy  of  description,  which  goes 
to  prove  that  the  clairvoyance  of  the  imagination 
is  sometimes  a  very  good  substitute  for  the  actual 
experience  of  an  author.  The  later  stories  of 
Mr.  Crane  showed  that  he  was  getting  back  to 
nature  and  to  the  memories  of  his  boyhood — a 
fine  symptom.  As  a  war  correspondent  in  the 
field  his  work  was  handicapped  by  facts  and 
lacked  that  quality  of  spontaneity  and  perspective 
whicli  made  his  fiction  so  delightful.  He  had  a 
remarkable  metonymic  gift,  as  eftective  in  its 
way  as  the  archaic  talent  of  Stanley  J.  AVeyman. 
Mr.  Crane  employed  this  gift  with  less  felicity  in 
his  verse,  where  it  usually  makes  the  most  dis- 
tinguished showing,  than  in  his  prose.  In  fact, 
^Ir.  Crane's  genius  was  not  strictly  of  a  })oetic 
order.  In  striving  for  strength  he  evolved  hy- 
brid and  amorphous  meters  destitute  of  rhythm 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  33 

and  melody.  lu  other  words,  he  did  not  have 
the  poet's  ear  for  music.  Yet  he  left  some  of 
the  most  drastic  and  picturesque  prose  that  was 
penned  during  the  last  decade  of  the  last 
century. 

Dr.  AV.  Kobertson  Nicoll  says:  "When  the 
word  or  phrase  comes  along,  undelaying,  and  fit, 
it  is  best.  In  the  language  of  the  really  great 
writer,  there  are  no  synonyms."  At  the  first 
blush  this  seems  a  rather  extravagant  statement. 
Let  us  see  if  it  is.  Perhaps  no  two  words  have 
exactly  the  same  meaning,  but  many  have  a  simi- 
lar meaning.  If  this  be  true,  then  synonyms  are 
not  identical,  but  approximate.  They  seem,  how- 
ever, such  close  equivalents  of  each  other  that 
they  are  familiarly  used  in  an  interchangeable 
manner ;  but  we  often  see  how  the  faulty  use  of 
synonyms  leads  to  violations  of  precision.  Loose 
diction  is  full  of  pleonasms  and  often  goes  arm  in 
arm  with  a  strutting,  thrasonical,  and  pavonine 
style. 

The  great  number  of  so-called  synonyms  in  the 
English  language  is  due  to  its  formation.  Nor- 
man-French words  were  superimposed  upon  the 
Anglo-Saxon  speech,  with  the  result  that  there 
are  many  words  of  primitive  English  and  Korman 
origin  now  in  the  language  which  exist  side  by 
side  and  express  very  similar  ideas.  It  is  because 
of  this  fact  probably  that  so  many  persons  think 
we  have  an  embarrassment  of  synonyms.^ 

^  "  An  analogous  difference  appears  in  comparing  the 
synonyms  in  two  languages  :  clergyman  and  ecclesias- 


34  WORD-COINAGE. 

De  Mille's  definitiou,  it  seems  to  me,  comes 
nearest  to  being  satisfactory  :  "  Synonymous  words 
may  be  said  to  be  similar  as  to  their  general 
meaning,  but  dissimilar  as  to  their  specific  mean- 
ing." It  should  be  remembered  that  language  is 
sometimes  used  to  disguise  or  to  conceal  thought. 
Likewise  is  it  an  approved  canon  that  an  essential 
aim  of  art  is  to  conceal  art,  and  this  aim  has  been 
carried  to  such  perfection  in  literature  as  to  create 
many  an  illusion  of  a  writer's  freshness  of  impres- 
sions and  spontaneity. 

In  his  very  instructive  book,  Evenj-Day  Eng- 
lish, Richard  Grant  White  says :  "  It  is  true,  in 
a  certain  sense,  with  but  few  exceptions,  words 
have  but  one  meaning ;  that  is,  the  radical  and 
essential  meaning  of  the  word  exists  so  as  to  be 
perceivable,  and  so  as  to  be  a  constant  guide  to 
its  right  use.  At  the  same  time  most  words,  if 
not  indeed  all,  are  used  with  such  a  degree  of 
vagueness,  small  though  it  be,  such  a  lack  of  per- 
fect consent  and  identical  apprehension  among  all 
the  users,  that  possibly  no  word  has  exactly  the 
same  meaning  to  any  two  persons."    George  Eliot 

tiqiie^  God  and  Dieu^  liebe  and  amour,  brio  and  brilliant, 
girl  and  jeune  fille,  do  not  respectively  mean  the  same 
things,  though  we  transhite  one  by  the  other.  The  two 
words  of  each  couple  represent  two  different  objects  and 
are  ditferently  understood  by  the  two  peoples.  Their 
sense  is  the  same  in  the  rough  ;  the  details  of  their 
meanings  are  different  and  untranslatable  in  the  absence 
of  simitar  objects  and  emotions  in  the  two  cases." — H, 
Taine. 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  35 

says  in  Middlemarcli :    "The  meaning   we  attach 
to  words  depends  on  our  feeling." 

Professor  Whitney  mentions  as  a  reason  in 
favor  of  the  adoption  of  a  certain  word  (reliable) 
its  "enrichment  of  the  language  by  a  synonym 
which  may  yet  be  made  to  distinguish  a  valual)le 
shade  of  meaning." 

The  popular  meaning  of  a  word  may  not  at  all 
include  its  literary  content.  It  takes  on  and 
loses  values  according  to  the  individuality  of  the 
writer.^  Used  subjectively,  it  may  be  scarcely 
more  distinct  than  a  haze-veiled  mountain ;  while 
in  an  objective  form  it  may  help  to  paint  a  grand 
picture  or  appeal  to  some  salient  emotion. 

But  if  the  great  writer  needs  no  synonyms, 
which  I  am  inclined  to  doubt,  he  sometimes,  espe- 
cially if  he  be  a  scientist  or  a  philosopher,  comes 
to  a  gap  which  he  cannot  fill  with  technical  nicety 
l)y  any  known  word  in  his  language.  It  is  then 
he  must  call  upon  his  invention  to  frame  a  word 
to  serve  his  purpose,  one,  of  course,  formed  on  a 
reasonably  good  analogy.  Thus  Comte  invented 
the  word  altruism  ;  Professor  Huxley  the  word 
agnostic  (see  p.  67),  Dr.  James  McCosh  the  word 
miriagnostic  (see  p.  67 ),  Dr.  Andrew  T.  Sill  the 
word  osteojyath,  coined  on  the  analogy  of  homeo- 
path, etc. — one  who  practises  osteopathy,-  which 
refers  nearly  all  diseases  and  their  treatment  to 

^  "  We  all  imbue  words  with  meanings  of  our  own. " 
— .John  Burroughs. 

2  This  comparatively  new  school  of  doctors  adminis- 
tei^^  no  druo-s. 


36  WORD-COTNAGE. 

the  bones ;  and  ^lax  Nordau  the  words  7:>Z?(si- 
ology,  the  science  of  wealth,  and  macrohiotij,  the 
science  of  old  age.  Even  Eugene  Field's  words 
defining  the  various  phases  of  book  mania  may 
be  included  in  this  category :  Biblloparanoiacs, 
or  such  as  seek  merely  the  name  of  being  book- 
lovers  ;  bibliophrodisiacs,  such  as  imagine  they 
love  books;  bibliocranks,  such  as  have  a  madness 
in  a  certain  line  and  tolerate  no  other  line  ;  biblio- 
maniac,  a  well-rounded,  symmetrical,  and  hope- 
lessly incurable  collector.  The  last  is  not  a 
coinage  of  Mr.  Field's,  however :  it  was  used 
fifty  years  ago  by  F.  Somner  Merryweather,  an 
English  writer. 

The  word  truthful  at  one  time  gave  offense  to 
philologists  in  England,  because  it  was  said  to  be 
an  Americanism.  In  commenting  on  this  word 
William  Archer  rightly  urges  that  "it  is  not 
only  a  vast  improvement  on  the  stilted  'vera- 
cious,' but  one  of  the  prettiest  and  most  thor- 
oughly English  words  in  the  dictionary." 

Richard  Grant  White  was  not  opposed  to  new 
words  that  are  perfectly  eligible  and  necessary. 
His  opinion,  as  expressed  in  the  introduction  to 
his  book.  Words  and  Their  Uses,  was  this:  "New 
words,  when  they  are  needed  and  are  rightly 
formed,  and  so  clearly  discriminated  that  they 
have  a  meaning  peculiarly  their  own,  enrich  a 
language  ;  while  the  use  of  one  word  to  mean 
many  things,  more  or  less  unlike,  is  the  sign  of 
poverty  in  speech,  and  the  source  of  ambiguity, 
the  mother  of  confusion.     For  these  reasons  the 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  37 

objection  on  the  part  of  a  writer  upon  language 
to  a  word  or  a  phrase  should  not  be  that  it  is 
new,  but  that  it  is  inconsistent  with  reason,  in- 
congruous in  itself,  or  opposed  to  the  genius  of 
the  tongue  into  which  it  has  been  introduced. 
Something  must  and  surely  will  be  sacrificed  in 
language  to  convenience ;  but  too  much  may  be 
sacrificed  to  brevity.  A  periphrasis  which  is 
clear  and  forcible  is  not  to  l)e  abandoned  for  a 
shorter  phrase,  or  even  a  single  word,  which  is 
ambiguous,  barbarous,  grotesque,  or  illogical. 
Unless  much  is  at  stake,  it  is  always  better  to  go 
clean  and  dry-shod  a  little  way  about  than  to 
soil  our  feet  by  taking  a  short  cut." 

The  pedantic  prejudices  of  purists  seldom 
either  kill  or  exile  new  words  that  are  cordially 
accepted  by  the  people.  "  Only  a  dead  lan- 
guage," says  Brander  Matthews,  "  can  get  along 
without  neologisms,  without  a  steady  stream  of 
new  words,  new  uses,  new  phrases,  new  idioms. 
In  Latin  it  may  be  proper  enough  for  us  to  set 
up  a  Ciceronian  standard  and  to  reject  any  usage 
not  warranted  by  the  masterly  orator ;  but  in 
English  it  is  absurd  to  set  up  any  merely  per- 
sonal standard  and  to  reject  any  term  or  any 
idiom  because  it  was  unknown  to  Chaucer,  or  to 
Shakespeare,  to  Addison  or  to  Franklin,  to 
Thackeray  or  to  Hawthorne." 

In  his  essay  on  "  Mirabeau  and  the  French 
Revolution,"  Macaulay  mentions  "conservative" 
as  "the  new  cant  word."  That  was  in  1832. 
Since  then  the  word  has  become  strongly  rooted 


38  WORD-COINAGE. 

in  the  language.  Oliver  Goldsmith,  in  The 
Vicar  of  Wakefield,  introduced  the  word  "  fudge," 
which  survives  to  this  day,  and  so  far  as  I  know 
is  in  good  repute.  Rudyard  Kipling  coined  the 
word  curtiosity,  which  means  the  asking  of  "  ever 
so  many  questions."  It  may  perish  with  the 
book  in  which  it  appeared,  or  it  may  reach  a 
venerable  age  like  fudge — who  knows?  We 
have  many  examples  of  the  paronym — a  word 
that  exactly  represents  a  word  in  another  lan- 
guage, differing  from  it  only  in  some  slight 
modification.  Thus  nerve  is  a  paronym  of 
Latin  nervus ;  muscle,  of  museulus ;  canal,-  of 
canalis.  In  some  writers  we  perceive  a  grab  for 
tropology — that  is,  changing  the  original  import 
of  a  word.  Kipling  has  a  bold  and,  for  the  most 
part,  happy  faculty  in  this  way. 

To  have  the  mind  steeped  in  an  atmosphere  for 
literary  purposes  is  to  have  it  also  thoroughly 
stored,  if  need  be,  with  archaic  words  and  terms. 
For  three  or  four  years  Thomas  Moore  pored 
over  books  of  travel  in  the  Orient  before  writing 
Lalla  Rool-h.  When  the  poem  appeared,  nearly 
everybody  inferred  that  the  author  must  have 
lived  in  the  Valley  of  Cashmere.  Gustave 
Flaubert  went  to  Tunis,  and  then  to  the  ruins  of 
Carthage,  where  he  remained  for  a  long  time,  in 
order  to  gather  local  color  and  terminology  for 
his  masterpiece,  Salammbo.  By  the  way,  for  pen- 
ning Madame  Bovary,  Flaubert  was  brought 
before  the  Tribune  Correctionnelle  de  Paris  in 
1857.     It  was  claimed  by  V  Avocat  Imperial  that 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  39 

Christian  morality  condemns  realistic  literature 
— not  because  it  paints  the  passions,  like  hate, 
vengeance,  and  love — but  because  it  paints  them 
without  restraint,  without  limit.  Art  without 
law  or  principle  is  not  art.  It  is  like  a  beautiful 
woman  who  indelicately  exposes  her  person.  To 
impose  upon  art  the  single  rule  of  pul)lic  decency 
is  not  to  reduce  it  to  extreme  dependence,  but  to 
honor  it.  M.  Lenard,  in  defense,  said  that  the 
book  was  in  the  interests  of  morals  and  religion, 
as  it  pictured  the  end  of  the  woman  who  com- 
mitted suicide.  He  insisted  that  the  book  was 
realistic,  because  it  was  not  the  gross  materiality 
of  things  which  it  advanced,  but  the  human  sen- 
timent— what  the  soul  perceives  through  the 
senses.  The  proceedings  against  the  author  fell 
to  the  ground.  The  pleadings  and  arguments 
were  published  and  bristle  with  French  casuis- 
try. Many  novelists  and  dramatists  make  close- 
range  studies  of  localities,  as  did  Flaubert,  before 
laying  their  scenes  and  choosing  their  personages 
— Kipling,  for  instance.  Without  these  precau- 
tions and  this  preparation  their  work  would  be 
full  of  anachronisms,  which  would  be  detected  at 
once  by  the  alert  and  exacting  public. 

Unity  in  variety  ^  was  the  old  Greek  motto  as 

1  "  The  perfect  writer  will  express  himself  as  Junius 
when  in  the  Junius  frame  of  mind  ;  when  he  feels  as 
Lamb  felt,  will  use  a  like  familiar  speech,  and  will 
fall  into  the  ruggedness  of  Carlyle  when  in  Carlylean 
mood.  Now  he  will  be  rhythmical  and  now  irregular  ; 
here  his  language  will  he  plain  and  there  ornate  ;  some- 
times his  sentences  will  be  balanced  and  at  other  times 


40  WORD-COINAGE. 

applied  to  style.  By  way  of  giving  a  fillip  to 
his  diction,  Laurence  Sterne  would  insert  a 
quaint  epigram  now  and  then.  One  of  these — 
viz.,  "  The  Lord  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn 
lamb,"  most  people  familiarly  quote  as  coming 
from  the  Bible.  But  it  is  found  in  that  model  for 
all  literary  workers,  A  Sentimental  Journey.  It 
was  on  account  of  this  picturesque  saying  that 
Tom  Appleton  once  playfully  recommended  that 
the  Corporation  of  Boston  should,  for  the  sake 
of  improving  the  climate  there,  place  a  shorn 
lamb  at  the  northeast  corner  of  the  Common. 

The  manner  of  writing  obviously  enough  de- 
pends upon  the  manner  of  thinking.  Clearly  to 
understand  the  subject  in  hand  is  the  first  require- 
ment ;  but  I  do  not  purpose  to  thresh  over  the 
principles  of  style,  wliich  have  been  so  ably  treated 
by  Buffon,  Herbert  Spencer,  and  others.  Mr. 
Spencer  shows  that  the  more  energy  is  required 
to  get  the  writer's  meaning  from  his  words,  the 
less  will   be  left  for  the   thought,  and  that  the 

unsymmetrical ;  for  a  while  there  will  be  considerable 
sameness,  and  again  great  variety.  His  mode  of  ex- 
pression naturally  responding  to  his  state  of  feeling, 
there  will  flow  from  his  pen  a  composition  changing  to 
the  same  degree  that  the  aspects  of  the  subject  change. 
.  And  while  his  work  presents  to  the  reader 
that  variety  needful  to  prevent  continuous  exertion  of 
the  faculties,  it  will  also  answer  to  the  description  of  all 
highly  organized  products,  both  of  man  and  of  nature  ; 
it  will  be  not  a  series  of  like  parts  simply  placed  in 
juxtaposition,  but  one  whole  made  up  of  unlike  parts 
that  are  mutually  dependent." — From  Herbert  Spen- 
cer's essay  on  "The  Philosophy  of  Style." 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  41 

writer  therefore  should  aim  to  economize  the 
reader's  energy  by  making  the  expression  as 
transparent  as  possible.  To  convey  thought  and 
not  mere  words  is  the  purpose  of  writing,  though 
mental  development,  to  say  nothing  of  literature, 
could  not  go  far  without  language.  Such  models 
as  Bacon,  Macaulay,  and  Addison  are  worth 
giving  many  days  and  nights  to ;  but  these 
authors  had  their  intellectual  failings.  Richard 
Grant  White  has  toppled  over  some  of  the  popu- 
lar notions  as  to  the  elegant  English  of  Addison  ; 
and  Bacon  and  Macaulay  are  not  beyond  just 
criticism. 

Professor  Huxley's  suggestions  as  to  style  are 
excellent.  "The  business  of  a  young  writer," 
he  declares,  "  is  not  to  ape  Addison  or  De  Foe, 
l:>ut  to  make  his  style  himself  as  they  made  their 
styles  themselves.  They  were  great  thinkers,  in 
the  first  place,  because  by  dint  of  learning  and 
thinking  they  had  acquired  clear  and  vivid  con- 
ceptions about  one  or  other  of  the  many  aspects 
of  men  and  things.  In  the  second  place,  because 
they  took  infinite  pains  to  embody  those  concep 
tious  in  language  exactly  adapted  to  convey  them 
to  other  minds.  In  the  third  place,  because  they 
possessed  that  purely  artistic  sense  of  rhythm  and 
proportion  which  enabled  them  to  add  grace  to 
force,  and,  while  loyal  to  truth,  made  exactness 
subservient  to  beauty.  If  there  is  any  merit  in 
my  English  now,  it  is  due  to  the  fact  that  I  have 
by  degrees  become  awake  to  the  importance  of 


42  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  three  conditions  of  good  writing  which  I  have 
mentioned." 

The  constructive  powers  of  the  mind  are  pecu- 
liarly affected  by  words,  which  actually  suggest 
ideas,  and  they  in  turn,  by  association,  suggest 
others.  John  Dryden  was  frank  enough  to  ac- 
knowledge that  a  rhyme  had  often  helped  him  to 
an  idea.  Whole  systems  of  philosophy  have  been 
built  upon  a  few  words — employed  in  an  arbitrary 
or  dogmatic  sense. 

Read  Holy  Writ  if  you  would  gain  mental 
as  well  as  moral  and  spiritual  stimulus,  and 
remember  that  words,  though  they  should  be  the 
natural  imprints  of  thought,  are  really  much 
more  than  any  one  thing  or  any  hundred  things 
to  which  they  have  been  likened.  To  one  man 
they  may  be  the  manna  of  culture  ;  to  another  an 
exhilarating  draught  of  ideas ;  to  still  another 
fuel  to  the  flame  of  his  emotions.  They  may  be 
the  coin  from  the  die  or  the  coin  from  the  hand. 
They  may  be  as  though  machine-made  or  a 
natural  product  like  an  apple  or  a  daisy,  but 
above  all  tlieij  are  vital,  living  things.  And  ap- 
preciating this  all-important  truth,  men  of  genius 
will  use  them  as  such  and  embody  their  concep- 
tions in  words  that  breathe  not  less  than  their 
thoughts. 

The  present  writer  is  convinced  that  hitherto 
the  intellectual  and  psychologic  aspects  of  lan- 
guage, especially  of  English,  have  been  too  much 
neglected  for  the  mechanical  side,  including 
grammar  and  rhetoric. 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  43 

Professors  Greenough  and  Kittredge,  in  their 
recent  book  entitled  Wordi  and  their  Ways  in 
English  Speech,  insist,  with  excellent  arguments, 
that  language  is  poetry,  because  it  is  metaphori- 
cal and  imaginative.  Is  this  not  virtually  imply- 
ing that  language  is  psychologic?  Certainly  they 
have  made  a  psychologic  study  of  the  English 
language  in  this  extremely  valuable  work.  In 
several  places  they  speak  of  what  was  Jelt  to  be 
the  sense  and  meaning  of  certain  words  at  cer- 
tain epochs.  But  they  say  this  :  "It  is,  of  course, 
absurd  to  ascribe  feeling  to  language,  except  in 
a  metaphorical  way.  Fortunately,  however,  the 
vague  syntax  of  composition  allows  the  German 
word  (Sprachgefuhl,  or  'speech-feeling')  to  mean 
a  'feeling  for  speech  '  as  well  as  'feeling  0/ speech,' 
and  by-and-by  we  shall  either  adopt  the  term  as  an 
English  word,  or  the  feeling  itself  will  accept 
some  other  suitable  phrase  to  express  the  idea, 
for  the  Sprachgefuhl  is  a  very  real  thing  in  a 
long-cultivated  language  like  our  own.  It  affects 
every  word  that  we  utter,  though  we  may  think 
that  we  are  speaking  as  the  whim  of  the  moment 
dictates  ;  and  thus   it  is  the  strongest  and  most 

pervasive  of  all  conservative  forces 

Men  of  genius  may  take  great  liberties  with  their 
mother  tongue  without  offence  ;  but  let  them  once 
run  counter  to  its  characteristic  tendencies,  let 
them  violate  the  English  Sprachgefuhl,  and  their 
mannerism  becomes,  as  it  were,  a  foreign  lan- 
guage. They  are  not  writing  English,  but — say 
Carlylese." 


44  WORD-COINAGE. 

The  principle  unclerlyiug  all  human  speech  is 
suggested  by  the  obvious  imitation  which  ac- 
companies all  natural  signs.  But  language  is 
not  purely  conventional,  as  has  been  wrongly 
inferred  from  the  fact  that  a  tacit  convention 
between  the  speaker  and  the  hearer  is  necessary 
to  the  adoption  of  a  common  language.  Apart 
from  its  uses,  language  itself,  in  its  complete 
articulated  structure,  is  one  of  the  grandest  tri- 
umphs of  imaginative  reason.^  At  the  very 
dawn  of  recorded  history  it  came  full-panoplied 
in  the  glorious  strength  of  its  maturity.  Yet  its 
inventors  were  not  scientifically  conscious  of  its 
mode  of  formation,  or  of  the  elementary  articu- 
lations of  sounds  of  which  its  words  were  com- 
posed. Kot  less  surprising  is  the  fact  that, 
though  the  parts  of  speech  (of  the  Greek  tongue) 
had  been  distinguished,  the  principles  of  ety- 
mology were  not  clearly  discerned,  nor  was  the 
relation  among  its  cognate  tongues  discovered, 
during  the  whole  period  of  its  greatest  vitality 
and  polish.  It  was  not  until  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury that  the  brilliant  scholar,  Sir  William 
Jones,  gave  the  impulse  which  produced  the 
modern  school  of  comparative  philology.  INIuch 
credit  is  also  due  to  Carl  Brugmann  and  his  col- 
leagues for  tracing  the  Indo-European  languages 
to  a  common  source. 

The  processes  of  linguistic  growth  often  seem 
to  be  merely  mechanical,  but  they  are  reallj 
under  a  purposeful  influence  from  the  moment 
^  James  G.  Murphy,  The  Human  Mind,  p.  275. 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  45 

they  enter  into  the  final  stage  of  conscious  con- 
struction. It  is  true,  the  consciously  evolved 
word  rarely  belongs  to  popular  literature,  but  to 
the  nomenclature  of  science.  Yet  these  arbitra- 
rily formed  words  do  not  always  and  of  necessity 
remain  learned.  If  there  be  need  of  them 
among  a  majority  of  the  people,  they  will  become 
popular.  But  they  are  subject  to  alterations  of 
meaning  quite  as  much  as  the  words  whose  origin 
cannot  be  traced.  And  many  words,  figurative 
at  first,  gradually  take  on  a  variety  of  secondary 
meanings  and  are  raised  to  a  generic  sense, 
including  a  number  of  specific  senses  ;  slang  terms 
go  through  many  extensions  and  changes  of 
meaning  before  they  are  lifted  to  the  dignity  of 
legitimate  words,  and  many  are  abandoned  to 
their  fate  as  without  the  rcbust  quality  necessary 
to  their  preservation.  Placing  new  meanings  on 
old  words  therefore  involves  as  much  conscious 
eflTort  as  coining  new  ones,  and  this  work  helps 
to  keep  our  language  aligned  to  the  spirit  of  our 
national  literature. 

The  psychologic  method  of  developing  language 
is  steadily  taking  the  place  of  the  old  desiccated 
formulas  of  grammar,  just  as  the  real  logic  of  to- 
day has  sprung  from  the  ancient  dust  of  formal 
logic.  It  is  studied  with  reference  to  its  dynamic 
functions  rather  than  to  its  artificial  patchwork. 
Its  growth  even  has  been  recognized  as  similar  to 
the  process  known  as  the  evolutionary  hypothesis 
in  biology,  wherein  the  animal  is  conceived  as 
evolving  by  successive  difterentiatious  out  of  a 


46  WORD-COINAGE. 

single  drop  of  jelly-like  protoplasm  ;  and  at  least 
by  one  college  professor  (Dr.  Fred  Newton  Scott) 
it  has  been  treated  in  terms  of  pathology,  in  a 
striking  paper  entitled  Diseases  of  English  Prose. 
We  speak  of  writers  like  Henry  Van  Dyke  and 
Edith  Wharton  as  having  great  powers  of  visual- 
ization ;  of  putting  words  together  in  such  vivid 
form  that  we  see  all  they  wish  us  to  see  and  from 
their  own  psychic  viewpoint.  The  following  pas- 
sage from  the  preface  in  H.  Taine's  work,  On 
InteUigence,  is  full  of  suggestion  to  those  who  are 
interested  in  this  phase  of  the  subject :  "  History 
is  applied  psychology.  .  .  .  The  historian 
notes  the  total  transformations  presented  by  a 
particular  human  molecule  or  group  of  human 
molecules  ;  and,  to  explain  these  transformations, 
writes  the  psychology  of  the  molecule  or  group ; 
Carlyle  has  written  that  of  Cromwell :  Sainte- 
Beuve  that  of  Port  Royal ;  Stendhal  has  made 
twenty  attempts  on  that  of  the  Italians ;  M. 
Renan  has  given  us  that  of  the  Semitic  race. 
Every  perspicacious  and  philosophical  historian 
labors  at  that  of  a  man,  an  epoch,  a  people,  a 
race :  the  researches  of  linguists,  mythologists, 
and  ethnographers  have  no  other  aim  ;  the  task 
is  invariably  the  description  of  a  human  mind  or 
of  the  characteristics  common  to  a  group  of  minds  ; 
and  what  historians  do  with  respect  to  the  past, 
the  great  novelists  and  dramatists  do  with  the 
present." 

In    her  beautiful   psychologic  study   of  "The 
Metaphor,"  Miss  Gertrude  Buck,  an  instructor  in 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  47 

English  in  Vassar  College,  has  written  a  mono- 
graph that  deserves  an  abiding  appreciation. 
She  takes  issue  with  many  authorities,  from  Aris- 
totle to  Spencer,  as  to  the  two  principal  forms  of 
metaphor,  and  her  discussion  of  these  mooted 
questions  is  both  thorough  and  convincing.  In 
one  passage  she  sums  up  thus  :  "  Specialization  in 
language  follows  at  some  distance  specialization 
of  thought ;  and  the  recognition  of  any  expression 
once  simple  as  metaphorical  marks  the  social  de- 
mand for  a  division  of  labor  on  the  part  of  lan- 
guage which  shall  make  it  adequate  to  the  grow- 
ing diflerentiation  of  thought  it  represents.  If  a 
definition  be  required,  radical  metaphor  arises 
when  a  thought  has  outgrown  its  form  of  expres- 
sion. It  is  the  bursting  of  a  double  branching 
significance  from  the  single  sheath  of  language 
once  adequate  to  contain  it."  Miss  Buck  in- 
dulges in  the  term  inetaphoraphohia — as  "  only  the 
logical  consequence  of  the  faith  that  metaphor 
arises  from  the  desire  of  the  writer  to  produce  a 
certain  efifect  upon  the  reader."  A  little  before 
that,  in  dealing  with  the  poetic  metaphor,  she 
argues  sagely  that  ''a.  piece  of  writing  which 
seeks  only  to  lay  bare  the  writer's  thought ;  with 
no  reference  at  all  to  the  capacity  or  interests  of 
the  reader,  is  condemned  as  bad  art ;  and  no  less 
is  the  work  found  wanting  which  looks  only  to  its 
effect  on  the  reader,  little  caring  to  be  true  to  the 
vision  of  him  who  writes.  And  of  this  last  sort 
must  be  the  metaphor  which  is  made  for  the  sake 
of  pleasing  the  reader,  if  no  real  sight   of  the 


48  WORD-COINAGE. 

writer  lies  behind."  Then  she  clearly  traces  the 
metaphor  process  on  its  way  to  plain  statement, 
where  it  is  sure  to  land  sooner  or  later,  and  finally 
reaches  the  conclusion  that  there  is  "  no  limit  to 
the  new  situations  of  which  our  expanding  uni- 
verse and  our  expanding  selves  are  capable. 
Metaphor,  while  a  stage  in  the  perceptive  process 
which  must  always  be  superseded  by  plain  state- 
ment, must  as  certainly  recur  in  a  new  perceptive 
process,  though  one  metaphor  may  die  into  ab- 
stract speech,  another  rises  out  of  the  very  exten- 
sion and  complication  of  experience  which  the 
former  process  of  growth  and  death  has  afforded. 
To  paraphrase  Swinburne's  assertion,^  'metaphors 
perish,  but  metaphor  shall  endure.'  " 

AYe  are  now  beginning  to  see  that  "  words  are 
the  soul's  ambassadors,"  as  Howell  phrases  it. 
Benjamin  Ide  Wheeler  says  that  "language  is 
art's  most  supple,  most  familiar  clay."  From 
a  psychologic  point  of  view  this  definition  is  too 
restricted.  I  prefer  Madame  Swetchine's :  "  There 
are  words  which  are  worth  as  much  as  the  best 
actions,  for  they  contain  the  germ  of  them  all." 
Or  this  one  of  Joubert's :  "  Words  become 
luminous  when  the  finger  of  the  poet  touches 
them  with  his  phosphorus."  Whipple,  who  said  : 
"  Nothing  is  rarer  than  the  use  of  a  word  in  its 
exact  meaning,"  was  one  of  the  comparatively 
few  Americans  of  his  time  who  understood  that 
the  most  precious  element  in  language  is  its  liu- 

^  "  Men  perish,  but  man  shall  endure;  lives  die,  but 
the  life  is  not  dead." — Hymn  of  Man. 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  49 

inanity  and  humanistic  purpose.  When  we  speak 
of  language  as  merely  plastic,  as  capable  of 
being  molded  and  twisted  and  distorted,  we  are 
viewing  but  a  small  segment  of  it. 

The  Bible  has  this  pretty  Eastern  simile  :  "  A 
word  fitly  spoken  is  like  apples  of  gold  in  pictures 
of  silver,"  but  no  attempt  is  made  here  to  tell 
what  a  word  actually  is.  Of  the  power  and  effect 
of  a  word  Walter  Savage  Landor  speaks  in  this 
wise :  "  On  a  winged  word  hath  hung  the  destiny 
of  nations."  Words  that  bubble  from  a  heart 
full  of  joyance  or  that  are  gasped  in  anguish  ; 
words  that  thrill  one's  whole  being  with  love  or 
courage,  or  crush  the  spirit  with  grief;  words 
that  come  flame-plumed  from  the  furnace  of  the 
brain — are  these  forever  to  be  treated  as  the 
swaddlings  or  garments  of  thought?  Perhaps 
when  thought  is  like  a  mummy  its  most  befitting 
garb  is  verbal  cerements  ;  but  when  it  is  alive, 
let  us  look  elsewhere  than  to  our  wardrobes  for 
comparisons. 

A  frequent  verbal  mesalliance  is  that  of  a  feeble 
noun  and  a  strong  adjective,  which  reminds  me  of 
something  to  be  said  anent  the  latter.  If  the  nine 
parts  of  English  speech  were  conscious  of  fatigue, 
like  human  beings,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  poor  adjective,  overworked  at  all  hours  of  the 
day  and  night,  with  no  vacations  or  holidays  or 
rest  even  on  Sundays,  would  feel  a  degree  of  las- 
situde bordering  on  coma.  It  certainly  would  be 
in  no  proper  state  to  l)e  drawn  upon  for  all  kinds 
of  haphazard,  extravagant,   ludicrous,   bitter,  in 


50  WORD-COINAGE. 

short,  universal,  service,  which  now,  as  a  helpless, 
inanimate  symbol,  it  performs  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  its  perfervid  users. 

We  do  not  have  to  dip  into  grammar  very  far 
to  prove  that  the  adjective  is  an  important  flictor 
of  language.  It  is  so  volatile  an  ingredient, 
however,  and  so  readily  mixes,  whether  with  oil 
or  water,  or  both,  that  even  literary  chemists  often 
make  strange  and  absurd  compounds  by  a  too 
liberal  use  of  it.  Like  wax,  many  adjectives 
solidify  just  under  their  melting-point. 

The  writers  of  epic  and  heroic  poetry — the 
real  classicists — have  never  overworked  the  ad- 
jective, because  their  narratives  demanded  the 
use  of  the  verb  and  the  adverb,  and  the  concrete 
suggestions  of  names  and  places  and  men  and 
things,  all  belonging  to  the  noun  department. 
Nor  do  the  great  essayists  bury  their  thoughts 
under  piled-up  cairns  of  adjectives.  Going  back 
no  further  than  to  Emerson,  listen  to  this  stroke 
of  his  mental  bell  :  "  All  things  are  moral,  and 
in  their  boundless  changes  have  an  unceasing  ref- 
erence to  spiritual  nature.  Therefore  is  nature 
glorious  with  form,  color,  and  motion,  so  that 
every  globe  in  the  remotest  heaven,  every  chemi- 
cal change  of  vegetation,  from  the  first  principle 
of  growth  in  the  eye  of  a  leaf  to  the  tropi- 
cal forest  and  antediluvian  coal  mine,  every 
animal  function  from  the  sponge  up  to  Hercules, 
shall  hint  or  thunder  to  man  the  laws  of  right 
and  wTong  and  echo  the  Ten  Commandments. 
Therefore  is  nature  ever  the  ally  of  religion ; 


WORDS    AND    LITERARY    STYLE.  51 

lends  all  her  pomp  and  riches  to  the  religious 
sentiment." 

This  is  selected  at  random  from  Emerson's 
essay  on  "  Nature,"  and  the  purpose  of  the  quota- 
tion is  to  suggest  how  sparingly  Emerson  uses 
the  adjective.  And  you  will  find  in  reading 
Emerson  that  he  exercises  a  patrician  regard  for 
the  yalue  of  words  in  his  use  of  the  adjective. 

One  of  the  outlaws  to  be  considered  in  this 
connection  is  the  cheap  novelist.  The  untrained 
scribbler  glibly  makes  use  of  the  adjective  as 
though  his  point  of  view  must  be  accepted  if  he 
trains  enough  of  this  sort  of  ordnance  on  the  ob- 
ject of  his  praise  or  scorn.  As  to  the  newspaper 
use  of  words,  unsurveyed  miles  are  left  for  im- 
provement, especially  as  concerns  the  employment 
of  the  adjective. 

A  common  fault  is  the  use  of  the  superlative 
degree  for  everything,  so  that  force  is  altogether 
lost  by  reason  of  the  instinctive  discount  of  the 
printed  statement  by  the  reader.  Discrimination 
in  the  use  of  the  adjective  implies  a  careful  study 
of  words,  which  not  unjustly  may  be  called  one 
of  the  neglected  American  virtues.  *'It  is  gen- 
eral culture  above  all,  it  is  the  constant  submis- 
sion of  a  teachable,  apprehensive  mind  to  the 
influence  of  minds  of  the  highest  class,  in  daily 
life  and  in  books  that  brings  out  upon  language 
its  daintiest  bloom  and  its  richest  fruitasre." 
(White.) 

The  wilding  words  of  the  rural  districts  have 
a  charm  of  their  own  which  no  scholastic  burnish- 


52  WORD-COINAGE. 

ing  could  improve  in  luster.  Tliey  are  the  corn- 
fed  words,  as  oue  might  say.  Those  words  which 
belong  to  the  cliches  of  criticism  pall  on  us  at 
times  ;  we  are  cloyed  by  those  symbols  of  the 
prescieuse  which  exist  to-day,  as  in  Moliere's 
time.  Who  does  not  like  language  that  smacks 
of  the  soil,  that  has  the  spicy  odor  of  native 
herbs?  Dr.  Felix  Adler  said  in  a  lecture  on 
Kipling :  "  With  his  grip  on  words  whose  roots 
smell  of  the  earth  from  which  he  has  dug  them, 
he  believes  the  whole  white  race  to  be  the  chosen 
instruments  of  God  to  carry  Western  ideas  to  en- 
lighten the  East." 

To  the  extent  that  we  realize  its  primary  and 
historical  sense,  substantiate  its  past  worth  and 
anew  in  our  turn  further  it,  what  we  may,  on  its 
course  of  development,  are  we  entitled  to  the  use 
of  a  word.  If  the  word  of  a  writer  be  a  mere 
conventional  counter,  then  the  whole  writing 
composed  of  such  counters  is  of  like  character. 

We  are  known  as  thoroughly  by  the  words  we 
use  as  by  the  company  we  keep,  and  it  should  be 
the  lofty  aim  of  every  man  of  letters  to  pass  each 
word  along — enhanced  in  meaning — with  some- 
wliat  of  the  aroma  of  his  own  intellectual  nature, 
as  the  poet  Virgil  was  said  to  touch  upon  no  sub- 
ject but  to  adorn  it. 


CHAPTER    HI. 

FOSTER     WORDS,    VARIANTS,    AND    BY-PRODUCTS. 

CNoAH  Webster,  in  the  preface  to  his  Diction- 
ary (edition  of  1828),  mentions  the  number  of 
-words  in  the  English  language  as  being  between 
70,000  and  80^000.  About  three  times  that 
number  have  crept  into  the  language  within  the 
last  sixty  years,  some  of  them  for  only  an  ephem- 
eral existence,  while  others,  once  classed  as  slang 
or  vulgarisms,  are  to-day  permanent  adjuncts  of 
it.  Probably  less  than  20  per  cent,  of  these 
words  were  consciously  evolved.  They  came 
spontaneously  and  without  premeditation. 

Though  the  mint  of  language  is  not  all  out- 
doors, learned  academies  have  often  tried  and 
generally  foiled  to  coin  new  words.  For  instance, 
a  Committee  of  the  French  Academy  has  in 
charge  the  compilation  of  the  Academy  Diction- 
ary. An  interesting  account  of  the  proceedings 
of  that  Committee,  which  has  so  long  been  the 
butt  of  humorists,  was  given  recently  in  the  Echo 
de  Paris. 

"  The  Committee  consists  of  six  members,  and 
meets  once  a  week.  At  each  meeting  ^I.  Gaston 
Boissier  calls  upon  his  brother  academicians  to 

5.S 


54  WORD-COINAGE. 

read  out  the  defiuitious  which  they  have  under- 
taken to  draw  up.  The  reading  done,  M.  Bois- 
sier  adjourns  to  a  desk  on  which  an  ohl  Littre  is 
lying.  He  reads  a  few  words  with  Littre' s  defi- 
nitions, and  asks  who  will  undertake  to  compose 
a  new  definition. 

"As  a  rule,  each  member  of  the  Committee 
tries  to  pass  the  duty  on  to  some  one  else.  M. 
Gerard  draws  attention  to  the  competence  of  M. 
Brunetiere  ;  ]M.  Mezieres  insists  eloquently  on  the 
competence  of  M.  Lavedam. 

"  When  the  words  have  been  assigned,  and  the 
meeting  is  on  the  point  of  adjourning,  some  one 
timidly  proposes  the  adoption  of  a  new  word. 
There  is  a  storm — a  perfect  babel  of  tongues. 
The  new  word  is  almost  invariably  rejected ;  and 
then  the  members  of  the  Committee  go  home." 

In  the  order  of  heirship,  sovereignty  has  been 
recognized  as  a  Law  of  the  Unavoidable ;  and  I 
think  this  law  applies  to  language.  Considered 
as  a  unit  of  a  community,  a  man  is  subject  to 
certain  unavoidable  laws.  As  a  unit  of  lan- 
guage, so  is  a  word.  Though  perfectly  free  as 
an  individual,  a  man  is  bound  to  live  in  subjec- 
tion as  a  member  of  a  community.  A  word  is 
likewise  conditioned.  Formalities  to  which  he 
has  never  consented  and  from  which  he  cannot 
escape  govern  all  the  acts  of  a  man's  life.  Simi- 
lar formalities  control  words. 

The  principle  of  sovereignty  is  the  outgrowth 
of  this  aggregate  of  necessities  which  compel  the 
submission  of  man.     Still  the  parallel  holds  good 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,   BY-PRODUCTS.       55 

as  to  a  word.  By  applying  this  principle  to  the 
life  of  nations  we  derive  its  succession,  a  princi- 
ple which  governs  men  and  societies,  a  law 
belonging  to  the  moral  world  and  therefore 
beyond  the  control  of  man.  Is  this  not  true  of 
lano;uao"e  ?  When  this  law  is  misunderstood  and 
transgressed,  anarchy  and  misfortune  follow,  both 
in  society  and  in  language. 

Occasion  is  the  factor  that  guarantees  the  stamp 
of  popular  validity  to  new  words.  The  late  war 
in  South  Africa  brought  to  the  surface  such  ex- 
pressive words  as :  Berg,  a  mountain ;  biltong,  dried 
meat ;  commando,  a  Boer  army ;  commandeer,  to 
requisition  ;  donga,  a  water  hole  ;  dorp,  a  village  ; 
drift,  a  ford ;  fontein,  a  spring  ;  Hi]),  a  stone  ; 
kloof,  a  ravine  ;  Jcopje,  a  hillock  ;  kraal,  a  native 
village  ;  laager,  a  camp ;  mealie.%  Indian  corn  ; 
nek,  a  saddle  connecting  two  hills  ;  pan,  a  sheet 
of  water ;  pont,  a  ferry  ;  poort,  a  pass  between 
mountains ;  shdt,  a  dry  ditch  ;  spruit,  a  small 
stream ;  taal,  the  Boer  language  ;  trek,  to  march  ; 
Uitlander,  a  non-burgher  ;  veldt,  the  prairie  ;  vlei, 
a  small  lake  ;  zarj),  policeman. 

In  New  England,  many  years  ago,  the  Dutch 
word  "boer"  was  translated  boor,  and  accepted 
in  the  modern  English  sense.  ]\Irs.  Schuyler 
Van  Rensselaer  says  :  "  These  Xew  World  terms, 
indeed,  are  parallel  in  spirit  to  one  that  is  still 
commonly  used  in  the  Old  and  the  New  World 
both,  and  in  New  York  as  well  as  New  England. 
When,  to  mark  his  dullness  or  awkwardness,  we 
call  a  man  a  '  Dutchman,'  we  fancv  that  we  are 


56  WORD-COINAGE. 

referring  to  German  traits,  although  with  an 
incorrect  word.  But  we  are  really  echoing  the 
jealousy,  masked  as  contempt,  that  England  long 
ago  developed  for  her  great  rival,  Holland." 

The  adoption  of  the  foregoing  Boer  words 
means  nothing  more  than  assimilating  them,  but 
the  anglicizing  or  adapting  of  foreign  words 
usually  involves  a  more  or  less  conscious  per- 
formance. The  same  may  be  said  of  variants 
formed  from  proper  names  or  of  words  suggested 
by  events,  etc.,  at  least  when  the  principle  of 
analogy  is  employed.  Thus  the  word  "  bogus," 
meaning  counterfeit  or  false,  and  once  regarded 
as  a  slang  word,  has  a  somewhat  peculiar  origin. 
A  man  named  Borghese,  more  than  half  a  cen- 
tury ago,  made  himself  notorious  by  drawing 
bills  on  fictitious  banks.  His  name  was  com- 
monly called  Bogus,  and  his  bills,  as  well  as 
others  of  a  similar  character,  were  universally 
styled  bogus  currency.  Coco  is  Spanish  for  bogie, 
and  it  is  said  the  cocoanut  was  thus  named  from 
its  resemblance  to  a  distorted  human  face. 

The  word  "silhouette"  originated  from  the 
niggardliness  of  a  French  IMinister  of  Finance 
named  M.  Silhouette  (1709-67).  Under  his  rule 
the  meanest  tricks  were  practised  for  the  sake  of 
economy,  and  the  courtiers  of  Louis  XV.  had 
their  portraits  painted  in  black,  with  profile  view, 
claiming  that  the  policies  of  Etienne  de  Silhouette 
had  left  them  so  poor  that  they  could  not  afford 
anything  more  costly.  In  Elizabethan  times  it 
was  in  hats  that  gentlemen  found  most  scope  for 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,   BY-PRODUCTS.       57 

the  di8i)lay  of  their  taste.  It  was  said  that  the 
block  of  a  man's  head  altered  faster  than  the  felt 
maker  could  fit  him,  wherefore  the  English  were 
called  iu  scorn  "  Blockheads." 

Many  other  historical  examples  of  derivation 
might  be  given,  but  two  or  three  more  will  suf- 
fice. In  Greece  votes  were  inscribed  on  oyster- 
shells  (ostmca),  and  it  was  by  these  votes  that  an 
objectionable  person  might  be  banished  from  the 
country  or  "ostracized."  To  the  practice  of 
writing  on  wood  is  directly  due  the  word  "  book  " 
among  the  English.  Both  the  Saxons  and 
Danes  used  beechwood  for  the  purpose,  boc  being 
the  Saxon,  and  bog  the  Danish,  name  for  it. 
We  come  by  our  word  library  and  the  French 
get  their  word  livre  for  book  in  this  way  :  the 
thin  peel  found  m  trees  between  the  wood  and 
bark  was  called  liber  by  the  Romans,  and  in  time 
all  their  books,  however  written,  were  so  named. 
Our  word  "volume"  comes  from  volumen,  the 
name  given  by  the  Romans  to  the  substance 
which  they  rolled  up  as  they  wrote  on  it. 

The  development  of  family  names  is  in  itself 
an  intensely  interesting  subject.  Natural  objects, 
desirable  personal  qualities,  and  even  physical  in- 
firmities among  the  Romans,  have  supplied  sug- 
gestions for  given  names  and  surnames.  Vari- 
ous races  and  languages  have  recruited  the 
common  English  names  and  patronymics.  A 
large  number  of  our  family  names  have  come 
from  occupations  and  trades.  Some  of  them  de- 
fine themselves,  as  Potter,  Porter,  Cooper,  Chand- 


58  WORD-COINAGE. 

ler,  Butcher,  Cook,  Miller,  Weaver,  Draper, 
Tanner,  Mason,  Baker,  Spinner,  Smith,  Carpen- 
ter, Sadler,  Tailor,  Gardener,  and  Farmer. 

Others  represent  foreign  tones.  Gow  is  Irish, 
and  Gowan  is  Scotch,  for  Smith.  Backer, 
Baecker,  and  Becker  are  German.  Baker, 
Boulanger,  and  Bullinger  are  French  for  the 
same.  Still  others  preserve  the  old  English  suf- 
fixes, such  as  Webster  for  Weaver,  Baxter  for 
Bakester  and  Baker,  Bagster  for  bagman,  and 
Brewster  for  Brewer. 

Many  names  of  extinct  trades  have  been  trans- 
mitted— e.  g.,  Spicer,  Palmer,  Loriner,  Har- 
per, Heckler,  Arkwright,  Arrowsmith,  Fletcher, 
Barker,  Stover,  Archer,  Forester,  Fowler,  Fal- 
coner, and  Venner.  Mediaeval  offices  and  occu- 
pations are  represented  in  Beadle,  Bailey,  Con- 
stable, Marshall,  Burgess,  Reeve,  Sheriff,  Elder, 
Priest,  Monk,  Bishop,  Judge,  Chevalier,  Earl, 
Baron,  Duke,  Prince,  King,  Lord,  Scrivener, 
Scribner,  Castelan,  and  Castle. 

Primitive  family  names  were  formed  by  adding 
the  Saxon  word  son  to  the  father's — e.  g.,  Wil- 
liam, Williamson.  Tlie  Irish  prefix  0'  originally 
meant  grandson,  and  may  be  found  in  many 
names  such  as  O'Conor,  O'Neal,  O'Donnell,  and 
O'Brien.  The  Scotch  used  3Iac,  as  Macready 
and  Macaulay ;  and  this  is  often  abridged,  as  in 
McNabb,  IMcGregor,  Mc Andrews.  The  old  Nor- 
man prefix,  Fifz,  which  signifies  son,  is  shown  in 
Fitzhugh,  Fitzherbert,  and  Fitz-George.  Ben  in 
Arabic,  Sen  in  Scandinavian,  kui  in  Frisian,  and 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,   BY-PRODUCTS.       59 

vitch  iu  Russian  are  illustrated  by  Beu-Ezra, 
Ericssen,  Watkin,  and  Ivanovitch.  The  Frisians 
were  so  tenacious  of  old  customs  that,  until 
adopted  by  a  decree  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte  in 
1811,  surnames  among  them  were  unusual. 
"  Previously,  a  few  of  the  old  families  had  borne 
the  names  of  their  estates,  but  the  given  name 
was  repeated  over  and  over  in  families  with 
slight  variations  in  spelling  "  (E.  F.  Watrous ). 

The  next  step  in  the  modernizing  process  was 
to  combine  son  with  the  trade-name — e.  g.,  Smith- 
son,  McGowan,  Fitzroy.  This  practice  gave  rise 
to  such  tautology  as  McAnderson,  Fitz-Robinson, 
and  McPherson.  Names  fi-om  places  are  rela- 
tively modern.  The  poorer  classes  adopted  them 
without  a  connecting  particle.  But  the  wealthy 
used  "of,''  or  its  equivalents,  "a,"  "ap,''  "c?e," 
"iw?,"  '"ra?i,"  "(/?,"  "fk"  "dej;'  "  du;'  and 
"do.''  Instances  are:  "Carroll  of  Carrolton," 
'^ Apphilips,"  "Delancy,"  "YonGlahn,"  "Van 
Antwerp,"  "  Vanderhoven,"  etc. 

The  "  late  "  gold  discoveries  at  Cape  Nome,  in 
Alaska,  gave  prominence,  in  that  region,  to  the 
word  tundra,  which  is  Russian  and  means  low 
and  marshy  land.  A  well-informed  Western 
man,  who  has  investigated  the  matter,  says : 
"  Tundra  differs  from  'steppes'  in  this,  that  tun- 
dra is  used  to  describe  the  low,  flat,  and  ordinar- 
ily valueless  land  between  two  streams  and  is 
common  along  the  coasts  of  Siberia  and  on  the 
American  side  of  the  Behring  Straits,  all  of  which 
is   tundra.     Steppes   originally  meant    a    sandy 


60  WORD-COINAGE. 

desert,  but,  by  long  custom,  it  has  come  to  mean 
grassy  plains  as  well." 

From  Hensleigh  Wedgwood's  book,  Some  Dis- 
puted Etymologies,  is  to  be  derived  some  interest- 
ing lore  ^  about  words.  He  says,  for  instance, 
that  "  bully  " — a  favorite  term  among  small  boys 
and  used  by  them,  as  by  Shakespeare,  in  the 
sense  of  excellent,  as  "  O  sweet  bully  Bottom," 
"bully  knight,"  and  "bully  Sir  John" — seems 
to  be  traced  to  the  middle  high  German  bnole,  a 
brother,  spouse,  dear  friend,  or  something  much 
beloved.  From  this  it  may  be  seen  how  first  de- 
scriptive of  boon  companions,  then  of  those  who 
drank  in  taverns,  and  finally  of  those  whose 
carousels  and  excesses  made  them  brawlers,  it 
came  to  mean,  as  a  noun,  a  wrangling,  intimidat- 
ing fellow.  It  is  worth  while  remembering  that 
the  word  "filibuster,"  used  so  often  in  American 
politics,  is  a  corruption  of  freebooter,  introduced 
by  the  old  English  pirates. 

"  Cad,"  meaning  one  who  excites  contempt  or 
disgust  bv  his  speech  or  actions,  is  related  to  the 
Lincolnshire  word  cad,  which  stands  simply  for 
carrion,  a  cad  crow  being  a  carrion  crow.  The 
Italian   carogna,   signifying   both    carrion    and  a 

'  The  student  is  also  referred  to  the  following  works, 
in  which  are  answered  hundreds  of  desiderata  on  this 
subject:  Murray's  Oxford  Dictionary,  vols,  i.-iv.,  for 
the  biography  of  hosts  of  neoloo;isras  ;  A.  S.  Palma, 
Folk-Efymology,  London,  1882  ;  T.  L.  O.  Davies,  Svjj- 
plejyirnfary  English  Glossary.  London,  1881  ;  Barriere 
and  Leland,  Dictionary  of  Slanq^  2  vols.,  London; 
J.  Maitland,  American  Slang  Dictionary^  Chicago,  1881. 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,  BY-PRODUCTS.       61 

jade,  and  the  Dutch  Schebn,  a  carcass  or  a  pesti- 
lent fellow,  are  analogues.  Cad  has  nothing  in 
common,  except  the  sound,  with  the  Scotch  word 
cadie  or  caddy,  now  being  popularized  with  the 
game  of  golf 

While  l)reakfast  has  a  perfectly  obvious  signifi- 
cance, luncheon  and  dinner,  so  far  as  their  ety- 
mology is  concerned,  are  shrouded  in  doubt.  The 
Saxon  infinitive  scencan,  to  drink,  gave  rise  to 
the  substantive  skinker,  or  one  who  pours  out 
drink.  In  default  of  an  equivalent  term  the 
German  word  Kellner,  or  cellarer,  is  used  to  a 
certain  extent  in  the  United  States.  From 
scencan  are  said  to  have  descended  both  nuncheon, 
said  of  a  drink  set  forth  for  workmen  and  others 
during  the  afternoon,  and  luncheon,  usually 
meaning  a  simple  meal.  Just  at  present  fashion- 
able society  uses,  in  the  same  sense,  the  word 
snack,  signifying  what  can  be  snatched  ^^^thout 
any  especial  preparation.  This  term  hails  from 
England. 

Now  as  to  dinner :  we  know  better  what  it 
means  than  what  it  is  derived  from.  The  first 
meal  of  the  day,  taken  immediately  after  return- 
ing from  mass,  was  known  formerly  as  disner  among 
the  French.  Students  of  language  conjecture 
that  it  originated  from  the  same  source  as  dejeu- 
ner, or  breakfast,  namely  in  the  Latin  verb 
jejunare,  to  ])e  hungry,  from  which  we  have  the 
modern  word  "jejune,"  or  starved,  generally  used 
metaphorically. 

A  negro  on   the   witness-stand   not   long  since 


62  WORD-COINAGE. 

used  the  word  snitch  aud  was  asked  what  it 
meaut.  This  was  his  amusing  reply  :  "  Why,  all 
the  damage  suit  lawyers  have  snitches.  A  snitch 
is  a  fellow  that  watches  for  people  to  get  hurt, 
and  calls  on  'em  as  soon  as  he  can  and  makes  a 
contract  to  sue  the  company  for  damages." 

The  recent  "unpleasantness"  in  the  Philip- 
pines gaye  some  of  our  American  volunteers  a 
chance  to  study  the  native  dialect.  Newspaper 
correspondents  have  cited  some  of  the  pet  words 
of  the  Filipino  vernacular.  Among  them  is 
hiking,  applied  to  any  swift  and  fatiguing  travel ; 
while  a  hiker  is  a  man  of  nimble  and  enduring 
powers.  "Cold  feet"  is  an  expression  often 
heard  in  ^Manila.  Its  plain  Anglo-Saxon  syn- 
onym is  cowardice.  "  Coffee  coolers  "  were  those 
who  managed  to  get  detached  from  their  regi- 
ments in  the  field  and  assigned  to  more  or  less 
easy  and  much  safer  berths  in  Manila.  A 
"coffee  cooler"  was  supposed  to  be  unable  to 
swallow  his  boiling  hot  coffee  on  the  morning  of 
battle.  A  Filipino  who  followed  the  cause  of 
the  revolution  was  known  as  a  googoo.  "  Chow- 
chow,"  meaning  to  eat,  eating,  or  food,  was  a 
word  brought  to  the  Philippines  by  the  Chinese, 
with  their  pidgin  English.  J/e.r,  referring  to  the 
Mexican  dollar,  the  former  standard  of  money  in 
these  islands,  is  now  typical  Philippine  slang. 

A  noun  of  strictly  native  invention  is  bom-bom. 
Native  imitation  would  be  perhaps  the  more  accu- 
rate term.  "  A  cannon,"  wrote  H.  Irving  Hancock, 
"  on  being  discharged,  gives  forth  an  angry  roar 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,  BY-PRODUCTS.       63 

of  '  Imjiii  ! '  111  a  second  or  two  the  shell  ex- 
l)lo(les  with  a  fainter  *  bom  ! '  Coupling  cause 
and  effect  gave  us  bom-bom.  If  a  native  desires 
to  explain  that  a  big  fight  is  on,  he  plaintively 
says,  'Mucho  bom-bom.'  "  This  reminds  me  of 
"  Et  pom-pom-pom-Xapoleon,"  the  refrain  of  a 
satirical  ballad  which  privately  went  the  rounds 
in  France  just  after  Bonaparte  became  emperor. 

In  connection  \nth  the  recently  besieged  em- 
bassies in  Pekin  came  the  word  "  legationers," 
and  had  the  Chinese  imbroglio  continued,  there 
doubtless  would  have  been  driven  to  our  shores 
an  immense  immigration  of  strange  words.  One 
despatch  from  the  scene  of  war  stated  that 
the  "Chinese  concealed  on  the  banks  of  the 
Pei  Ho  are  snijiing.^'  In  the  sense  of  guerilla 
warfare  sniping  is  a  veritable  acquisition  to  a 
sound  vocabulary,  in  the  opinion  of  an  inland 
editor. 

The  new  words  and  phrases  called  forth  by 
exciting  events  serve  for  a  day,  and  to-morrow 
pass  into  the  banal,  the  outworn,  some  of  them 
perhaps  to  be  revived  under  happier  auspices. 
Kow  and  then  a  phrase  like  Grover  Cleveland's 
"innocuous  desuetude"  wins  wide  recognition 
and  has  the  clinging  qualities  of  a  burdock.  In 
truth,  we  constantly  use  phrases  without  a 
thought  of  their  origin.  We  speak  of  the  wife 
as  "the  better  half"  without  knowing  we  are 
quoting  no  less  a  personage  than  Sir  Philip 
Sidney  ;  or  we  repeat  something  from  ]Mrs.  Grundy 
without  suspecting  that  this  garrulous  dame  her- 


64  WORD-COINAGE. 

self  was  brought  into  existence  by  Thomas  Mor- 
ton, a  playwright  who  lived  until  1888. 

The  word  "  boycott "  originated  in  this  way : 
Lord  Erne,  an  Irish  land-owner,  had  for  his  agent 
Captain  Boycott,  of  Lough  Mask,  Connemara, 
who  treated  the  tenants  with  such  severity  that 
they  petitioned  for  his  removal.  As  Lord  Erne 
ignored  their  complaints,  they  and  their  sympa- 
thizers retaliated  in  the  autumn  of  1880  by  refus- 
ing to  work  for  Boycott  and  preventing  any  one  else 
from  doing  so.  The  agent  would  have  been  ruined 
had  not  certain  Ulster  men,  protected  by  an  armed 
force,  come  to  his  relief  and  husbanded  the  crops. 
Boycott,  meaning  "  a  combination  that  refuses  to 
hold  any  relations,  either  public  or  private,  busi- 
ness or  social,  with  any  person  or  persons  on 
account  of  political  or  other  differences,"  was  first 
used  by  the  Irish  Land  Leaguers,  and  the  word 
thence  passed  into  popular  use. 

London  recently  brought  out  the  name  "  Hooli- 
ganism," to  indicate  the  character  and  doings  of 
bands  of  hoodlums  that  infest  her  streets  and 
commit  all  kinds  of  misdemeanors.  A  similar 
class  in  New  York  a  few  years  ago  suggested 
the  expression  "gang  rule." 

We  are  almost  daily  threatened  with  words 
which,  it  is  to  be  feared,  the  mightiest  Thor  of 
criticism  cannot  hurl  back  to  their  own  sphere 
with  a  thunderbolt  of  discrimination,  if  they  once 
get  a  popular  headway.  They  are  mainly  freak 
verbs,  which  are  always  being  formed  out  of 
proper  names.     Lieutenant   Hobson's  osculatory 


FOSTER    WORDS,  VARIANTS,   BY-PRODUCTS.       65 

exploits,  after  his  iDdisputa])Iy  brave  act  in  sink- 
ing the  Merrimac,  inspired  such  monstrosities  as 
hobsonize,  hohsonization,  etc.  But  as  the  thrilling 
occurrences  and  the  popular  heroes  of  them  pass 
into  history,  most  of  these  e])ithets  are  ostracized 
and  disappear  into  the  Valhalla  of  language. 

The  negroes  of  our  Southern  states  are  ever 
ready  with  impromptu  expletives,  and  negro  chil- 
dren are  known  to  have  a  facility  of  expression 
and  a  gift  for  imitation  far  in  excess  of  the  chil- 
dren of  the  unlettered  whites.  Justly  has  it  been 
said  (D.  F.  St.  Clair)  that  the  negro  got  this  lin- 
guistic gift  from  slavery.  "  The  most  of  this  class 
of  whites  were  cut  off  from  intimate  intercourse 
with  the  dominant  class,  and  in  Xorth  Carolina 
and  Tennessee  fully  a  fourth  of  the  white  popula- 
tion is  inherently  illiterate." 

But  while  the  negro  may  have  more  of  the 
gift  of  imitation  and  linguistic  facility,  he  has  not 
initiative  and  great  patience  ;  and  if  one  will 
study  the  vernacular  of  the  backwoods  people,  he 
will  discover  that  they  have  originated  ten  words 
to  the  negro's  one. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  CONSCIOUS    INVENTION  OF  WORDS. 

By  the  simple  method  of  transposition  some 
patient  person  has  worked  out  twenty-six  different 
readings  of  one  line  from  Gray's  well-known 
Elegy— 

The  plowman  homeward  plods  his  wearj^  way — 

yet  he  claims  the  sense  is  not  affected.  Per- 
haps not  to  the  casual  eye ;  but  any  change  of 
grannnatical  construction  makes  some  intellectual 
difference  of  meaning,  however  trifling,  for  it 
brings  the  image  or  impression  to  the  perception 
in  a  different  form. 

But  a  new  word  in  a  sentence  usually  affects 
its  sense  much  more  than  could  a  mere  transposi- 
tion of  old  ones.  And  the  first  question  an 
author  who  is  tempted  to  perpetrate  in  print  a 
word  of  his  own  sliould  ask  himself  is  this  :  Does 
it  have  "all  the  conditions  of  wordship"? — the 
quoted  phrase  being  Richard  Grant  White's. 
The  purpose  here  is  to  deal  with  words  that  are 
conscious  inventions,  and  to  use  such  illustrations 
as  have  come  to  the  present  writer's  knowledge. 

In  a  newspaper  interview,  not  long  ago,  Rev. 
66 


THE   CONSCIOUS    INVP]NTION    OF    WORDS.      67 

R.  8.  Macarthur  called  attention  to  a  new  word 
which  he  thinks  describes  the  condition  of  many 
men.  The  word  is  mirlagnostic.  "  It  is  a  word 
we  greatly  need,"  said  Dr.  Macarthur.  "  Many 
men  are  neither  agnostics  nor  gnostics.  In  the 
early  history  of  Christianity — in  the  third  cen- 
tury, I  think — there  was  a  sect  called  '  Gnostics.' 
Professor  Huxley  gave  us  the  word  agnostic. 
He  coined  that  word  because  he  said  that  in  a 
number  of  clubs  to  which  he  belonged  the  men 
used  titles  of  various  kinds,  but  he  said  that  he 
himself  was  without  'a  rag  of  a  title,'  and  so  he 
coined  the  word  agnostic,  as  the  opposite  of 
*  gnostic  '  of  the  early  Christian  centuries.  Joseph 
Cook  reached  the  conclusion  that  we  needed  a 
new  word,  because,  he  said,  many  men  were  not 
agnostics,  and  neither  did  they  claim  to  be  gnos- 
tics. He  asked  the  late  Dr.  McCosh  if  he  could 
coin  a  word  that  would  express  the  attitude  of 
the  large  majority  of  men  on  religious  topics. 
Dr.  McCosh  thought  a  moment  and  said,  '  Let  me 
rummage  a  little.'  In  the  Greek  lexicon  he 
found  the  word  myrias — numberless ;  and  in 
the  Latin,  mira — wonders.  'Now,'  he  said, 
all  you  want  to  do  is  to  add  'gnostic,'  and  they 
did  so,  and  made  miriagnostic  ;  and  that  is  one 
of  the  best  additions  to  linguistic  science  that  we 
have  had  in  many  a  day.  Now,  as  for  myself,  I 
am  only  a  miriagnostic.  I  usually  find  that  men 
who  call  themselves  agnostics  are  nothing  more 
nor  less  than  miriagnostics." 

Rev.  Robert  S.  Macarthur,  l)v  the  wav,  coined 


68  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  word  Messian — one  who  believes  in  the 
Messiah — the  Anointed  One.  It  is  not  yet  in 
the  dictionaries,  but  he  thinks  it  ought  to  be. 
He  says  the  orthodox  Jew  is  a  Messian. 

Rev.  Anselm  Kroll,  of  La  Crosse,  Wis.,  is 
sponsor  for  the  word  eutmj^elia  (directly  from  the 
Greek),  meaning  what  Mr.  Kipling  calls  clean 
mirth,  a  jest  without  a  jeer,  laughter  without 
scorn,  wit  without  malice,  a  joke  without  offense 
to  one's  neighbor.  The  learned  clergyman  has 
quoted  many  authorities  to  define  and  distin- 
guish it.  Some  one  has  deduced  the  following 
bit  of  bantering  philosophy  :  "  What  a  lovely 
world  it  will  be  when  its  clever  folk  cease  to 
strive  to  be  satirical  or  sarcastic,  and  resolve  to 
be  eutrapeloitsJ' 

The  following  examples  are  more  exegetical 
and  will  give  a  clearer  idea  of  what  is  meant  by 
conscious  invention  than  a  whole  volume  of  dis- 
quisition. 

Professor  J.  H.  Hyslop,  who  holds  the  chair  of 
Logic  at  Columbia  University,  has  coined  a  few 
words  and  invested  one  or  two  others  with  an  en- 
tirely new  meaning,  so  that  it  amounts  to  coinage. 

First,  he  coined  the  word  conferentia  in  logic, 
for  the  purpose  of  having  a  word  to  contrast  with 
differentia,  and  to  avoid  the  equivocal  use  of  the 
term  "genus."  Conferentia  he  uses  to  denote  the 
common  qualities  of  any  class  of  objects. 

Second,  he  coined,  so  far  as  he  knows,  the  term 
coiitravevi^ioih  as  a  better  term  for  what  is  usually 
called  contraposition  in  logic. 


THE    CONSCIOUS    INVENTION    OF    WORDS.      69 

Third,  the  word  velleity  is  an  unusual  word 
for  the  lowest  kind  of  desire,  but  he  ado})ted  it 
from  the  Latin  Velleitas,  to  denote  that  kind  of 
freedom  which  is  expressed  by  the  idea  of  alter- 
native choice,  and  in  distinction  to  freedom  as 
exemption  from  external  restraint  on  the  one 
hand,  and  freedom  from  mere  causation  without 
alternative  choice,  on  the  other. 

Fourth,  in  his  Ethics  he  coined  the  word  vnir- 
olism,  to  denote  that  theory  of  volition  that 
denies  alternative  choice  but  does  not  make  voli- 
tion the  effect  of  external  causes. 

Fifth,  in  his  recent  book  on  Democracy  he 
coined  the  word  kakidocracy,  as  the  proper  oppo- 
site of  aristocracy,  and  intended  it  to  express  that 
view  of  politics  opposing-  aristocracy,  which  meant 
unconsciously  to  defend  the  government  ])y  the 
worst  classes  instead  of  the  ])est. 

Professor  Hyslop  does  not  know  of  any  other 
words  that  have  been  coined  by  himself,  though 
he  has  several  in  his  mind  that  he  intends  to  coin 
in  the  publication  of  some  future  work. 

Professor  Simon  N.  Patten,  of  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania,  invented  a  new  word  which 
appears  on  page  166  of  his  Development  of  E)ir/- 
lish  Thought.  The  word  "introspection"  has 
been  in  use  for  the  knowledge  of  psychology  we  ob- 
tain by  studying  our  own  mental  states,  but  there 
was  no  word  to  indicate  the  knowledge  of  psychic 
phenomena  we  obtain  by  observing  others.  Need- 
ing such  a  word.  Professor  Patten  employed  the 
word    altrospection,  to    mean    the    knowledge  of 


70  WORD-COINAGE. 

psychology  we  can  obtain  by  observing  the  im- 
pressions that  excite  other  people  to  mental  ac- 
tivity, as  judged  by  their  reactions  against  their 
impressions. 

The  work  done  by  the  committee  of  the  Asso- 
ciation of  American  Agricultural  Colleges  and 
Experiment  Stations  has  made  necessary  new 
technical  words.  Agronomij,  zooteclimj,  and  agro- 
techny  are  terms  used  to  denote  divisions  of  the 
general  subject  of  agriculture.  Agronomy  covers 
the  general  subject  of  plant  production  ;  zootechny, 
animal  production;  and  agrotechny,  agricultural 
technology.  The  first  two  terms  are  adapted 
from  the  German ;  the  third  is  perhaps  original 
with  Mr.  A.  C.  True,  of  the  United  States 
Department  of  Agriculture,  and  his  colleagues. 

But  the  most  interesting  process  of  conscious 
invention  was  furnished  to  me  by  Dr.  Persifor 
Frazer,  of  Philadel})hia,  who  is  known  to  the 
world  in  the  triumvirate  capacity  of  geologist, 
chemist,  and  expert  in  disputed  documents.  In 
the  Bulletin  of  the  Society  of  American  Authors 
for  July  and  August,  1900,  I  published  a  letter 
inviting  all  members  of  the  society  to  give  me 
defiuite  information  as  to  their  word-coinages.  At 
the  first  note  of  this  call  Dr.  Frazer  stepped  for- 
ward, somewhat  regretful,  but  unabashed.  He 
entirely  agrees  with  most  people  as  to  the  pre- 
sumptuous atrocity  of  word-coining,  the  only  ex- 
cuse for  which,  he  thinks,  is  the  appearance  of  a. 
new  idea,  simple  or  generic,  without  a  name. 

He    assumes,    at  the  outset,   that    I    have    no 


THE    CONSCIOUS    INVENTION    OF    WORDS.      71 

objection  to  the  introduction  of  a  new  word  for 
an  entirely  new  invention,  such  as  that  ])v  which 
the  human  articulate  speech  may  be  conveyed  for 
long  distances  over  wire  ;  or  even  to  a  neologism 
like  Holoproda  apertura  (Cope)  by  the  discoverer 
of  the  fossil  remains  of  that  interesting  genus. 
He  fancies  that  I  may  have  in  mind  such  inven- 
tions as  heterophemy,  of  the  late  Richard  Grant 
White,  meaning  the  saymg  of  something  different 
from  that  which  it  was  one's  intention  to  say. 

Seven  years  ago  Dr.  Frazer  endeavored  to  sum 
up  the  results  of  studies  relating  to  the  general 
su])ject  of  documents  which  had  occupied  his 
leisure  for  many  years.  His  belief  was,  and  is, 
that  this  subject  is  susceptible  of  isolation  fi'om 
all  others,  and  of  reasonable  classification  into 
various  parts.  The  general  and  subordinate 
ideas  he  wished  to  indicate  were  as  follows :  (A) 
The  investigation  of  all  the  means  by  which 
thoughts  are  given  permanent  form  and  conveyed 
from  one  person  to  another.  This,  of  course, 
excludes  the  temporary  employment  of  the  senses 
through  a  conventional  use  of  successive  sounds, 
signs,  touches,  tastes,  or  odors ;  all  of  which  are 
evanescent. 

The  general  subject  he  wished  to  divide  into : 
(Al)  The  chemical  and  physical  characteristics 
of  the  materials  and  tools  used  in  thus  conveying 
thought ;  ( A2)  the  features  in  the  formation  of 
the  symbols  used  which  are  distinctive,  and  the 
separation  of  them  from  any  other — even  similar 
— symbols  ;  (Ao)  the  distinguishing  features  of 


72  ^   WORD-COINAGE. 

simulation,  fraud,  or  forgery  of  the  symbols  men- 
tioned in  A2. 

Now,  to  carry  through  a  work  on  this  plan 
when  one  is  obliged  to  repeat  all  the  preceding  defi- 
nitions, or  use  for  the  idea  the  empirical  charac- 
ters, Al,  A2,  etc.,  did  not  seem  to  Dr.  Frazer 
desirable.  After  much  deliberation,  and  with 
great  reluctance,  he  determined  to  find  an  appro- 
priate term  for  A,  A2,  and  A3.  Al  needed 
none.  He  received  a  number  of  answers  from 
literary  and  scientific  friends  to  his  requests  for 
counsel  and  guidance.  It  may  as  well  be  pre- 
mised that  "  graphology "  was  inadmissible,  be- 
cause it  had  been  preempted  for  the  charlatanry 
of  character-reading  in  hand-writing. 

It  will  be  noted  that  none  of  his  correspond- 
ents quoted  further  on  comprehended  that  his 
attempt  was  to  arrive  at  a  generalization.  He 
pleads,  in  extenuation  of  his  coined  words,  hihlio- 
tics  for  A  ;  grammctpheuy  for  A2  ;  and  plasso- 
pheny  for  A3 — the  necessity  that  an  algebraist 
has  for  representing  a  definite  quantity  by  a 
letter.  His  publisher  dared  not  print  the  real 
name  of  the  book  in  his  advertisement,  but  he  is 
bolder  now.  The  third  edition  came  out  recently. 
The  second  edition  was  printed  in  Paris,  and  the 
editor  hid  the  real  title  away  in  diamond  type  in 
the  preface. 

Dr.  Frazer  submitted  to  several  philological 
friends  the  following  list  of  prepared  words,  from 
the  Greek,  merely  to  facilitate  him  in  obtaining 
their  opinions : 


THE    CONSCIOUS    INVENTION    OF    WORDS. 


Grapho — I  write. 
Ph  ilosoph  ia — study. 
Anatome — dissection. 
Eredna — research. 
Mendo — I  reveal. 

The 

demonstration 

of  the  essence 

of  a 

handwriting. 

Fraudulent  handwritin,o^- 


Skopeo — I  look. 
Phainomia — (cause     to) 

appear. 
Plasso — I  feign. 
Plasma — forgery.  ^ 
Grajjhilosophij. 
PhilosograpJvj. 
Graphanatomy. 
Erunography. 
Graphoscopy. 
ScopograpjJiy. 
GrapJiopjhe)iy. 
^  Phenography. 
(  Plassography. 
Forgery —  \  Plasmographij. 

Demonstration  of  fraud — plassopheny. 
Revelation  of  forgery — plassmenyma. 
Below  are  some   of  the  answers  received  by 
Dr.  Frazer,  which  I   use   Avith  his   kind  permis- 
sion ;  also  that  of  Dr.  Furness.     The  two  other 
quoted  correspondents  are  dead. 

"222  West  AVashixgton  .Square. 

"  Dear  Frazer  : 

"  I've  broken  both  my  head  and  my  jaw  over  your 
prolilem,  and  my  feeble  conclusions  are  as  follows : 

"  First,  I  have  persuaded  myself  that  diplo- 
matics pretty  nearly  about  covers  your  ground  or 
can  be  made  to  cover  it     .     .     . 

"  Secondly,  the  main  objection  to  any  of  these 
words  in  your  list  is  their  strangeness — and  this 
1  Also  foundation. 


74  WORD-COINAGE. 

will  vanish  very  soon  after  you  have  begun  to 
use  it,  both  to  yourself  and  especially  to  your 
readers,  who  will  be  unconscious  of  the  pangs 
which  you  have  suffered  in  word-birth. 

"  Thirdly,  in  almost  all  these  Greek  words  I 
would  have  the  termination  ia,  so  as  to  throw  the 
accent  as  much  as  possible  on  the  second  word  of 
the  combination — e.  g.,  '  Plassography '  would 
almost  inevitably  be  pronounced  '  plassog^raphy,' 
and  the  '  graphy '  would  be  obliterated,  but  would 
be  retained  in  '  plassogra'phia.'      Comjjvenez  f 

"  Fourthly,  the  combinations  with  '  plasso '  are 
so  unusual,  not  to  say  far-fetched,  that  I  would 
eschew  its  pedantic  apearance,  and,  with  a  spirit 
of  'russet  yeas  and  honest  kersey  noes,'  would 
use  no  other  than  plain  '  forgery '  and  '  forgery- 
demonstration '  and  'forgery-revelation.'  You'll 
say  they  are  uncouth,  horrible.  I'll  retort  so's 
the  Greek — every  whit  as  bad — even  worse.  I 
fall  back  on  your  getting  used  to  anything. 

"  Your  '  graphology '' is  this  minute  received. 
'Tis  no  better  nor  worse  than  the  rest.  It  really 
tells  nothing  to  the  uninstructed  mind,  ^vhich  must 
in  any  case  wait  for  your  definition.  There  would 
be  more  likelihood,  I  think,  of  a  general  under- 
standing of  such  a  word  as  graphopsychohgy 
(which  ain't  so  bad),  and  die  Seele  is  as  good  as 
das  Wesen.  There,  dear  lad,  I've  done  my  little 
all  for  you  and  my  ])rain  is  as  dry  as  '  the  remain- 
der biscuit  after  a  voyage.' 

"  Yours  ever, 
[Signed]         "  H.  H.  F. 


THE    CONSCIOUS    IXVENTIOX    OF    WORDS.       iO 

"  P.  S. — My  first  aud  last  word  is  :  force  diplo- 
viatics  into  your  service." 

To  which  Dr.  Frazer  adds :  "  The  objection  to 
Dr.  Horace  Howard  Furuess's  advice  is  that 
diplomatics  is  already  married." 

Another  letter  (from  the  late  Daniel  G.  Brin- 
ton)  to  Dr.  Frazer  : 

'•2041  Chestnut  St.,  April  15,  1804. 

"Dear  Dr.  Frazer  : 

"  After  reflecting  what  I  could  add  to  the  in- 
closed list  with  reference  to  forged  or  counter- 
feited writing,  the  most  appropriate  term  which 
occurs  to  me  is  pseudaleor/mphy,  from  Greek, 
pseudaleos,  'counterfeit,'  'forged,'  'falsified.'  "We 
might  consider  grajjliopjlaxi/  or  (jraphopla><vr,  but 
these  are  less  desirable.  Taking  the  above  then, 
a  pseudaleograph  would  be  the  forged  or  imitated 
wntiug  which  is  the  object  of  your  study,  and  an 
'Essay  on  Pseudaleographs'  is,  as  I  understand 
it,  the  paper  which  you  are  preparing. 

"Trusting  the  suggestion  will  not  be  wholly 
useless  to  you,  I  remain, 

"  Yours  verv  trulv, 

[Signed]'" D.  G.  Brintox." 

Here  follow  three  short  communications  fi'om 
the  late  E.  D.  Cope,  the  celebrated  geologist : 
'^  Philadelphia,  April  4,  1894. 

"  Dear  Frazer  : 

"I  still  think  that  plassophanij  is  as  good  a  word 
as  you  can  get,  but  here  is  another  nearly  like 


76  _  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  one  you  suggest.  Menusis  is,  according  to 
ray  lexicon,  the  word  for  which  you  give  menuma ; 
hence  you  can  write  plassomenysis,  or  short,  for 
euphony,  plasmenysis ;  jjlassecjjhany  would  be 
very  exact. 

[Signed]   "  Edward  D.  Cope." 

"  Philadelphia,  April  4,  1894. 

"  Dear  Frazer  : 

"  Congratulat'iones  erumpnnt !  Hobscohlum  ele- 
phandrbio  !  The  word  I  wrote  was  plassecphany. 
If  I  wrote  anything  or  now  write  anything  con- 
trary to  the  Postal  Laws,  please  send  this  back 
and  I  will  write  a  better  one.  Your  word  is  as 
good  as  your  bond.     .     .     . 

-  E.  D.  C." 
"Philadelphia,  April  G,  1894. 

"De.\r  Frazer: 

"  The  name  proposed  is  good,  provided  you 
spell  it  with  two  s's — plassphenology.  It  is  ellip- 
tical, as  the  full  form  would  be  plassophenology. 
I  am  not  sure  whether  the  omission  of  the  o  would 
be  looked  on  with  favor  by  a  strict  construction- 
ist. I  would  put  the  *o'  in,  as  a  matter  of  taste. 
Logy  is  of  doul)tful  application  in  such  a  case. 
I  prefer  plassophany. 

-  E.  D.  C." 

It  should  be  conceded  that  Dr.  Frazer  has 
been  quite  frank  with  me,  furnishing  me  am- 
munition to  use  against  his  act  from  our  highly 
esteemed  Shakespearean  (Horace  Howard  Fur- 


THE    CONSCIOUS    INVENTION    OF    WORDS.      /  i 

ness).  But  it  is  plainly  to  be  seen  from  the  fore- 
going letters  that,  though  the  erudite  writers  gave 
some  very  interesting  suggestions,  they  misunder- 
stood what  Dr.  Frazer  wanted  the  words  to  ex- 
press. No  words  were  used  by  him  but  the  three 
mentioned — to  represent  ideas  A,  A2,  and  A3  ; 
so  that  a  part  of  the  title-page  of  Dr.  Frazer's 
book,  printed  according  to  his  coinages,  stands 
thus : 

A  MANUAL 


OF    THE 

STUDY  OF  DOCUMENTS 

(Bibnofics) 

TO    ESTABLISH   THE   IXDIYIDUAL   CHAR- 
ACTER  OF   HANDWRITING 

(Grammapheny) 

INCLUDING 

SEVERAL   METHODS  OF   RESEARCH 

{^Plassophejiy  ) 

ETC.,   ETC. 


CHAPTER  V. 

NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS. 

Though  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  lias  in- 
vented several  words,  and  in  some  cases  given  a 
new  meaning,  for  the  purposes  of  literature,  to 
strictly  scientific  terms,  yet  at  the  moment  of  his 
writing  to  me  on  the  subject  he  had  a  distinct 
recollection  of  only  one  of  his  coinages — viz., 
lyronym,  an  assumed  name  under  which  a  poet 
may  write.  This  occurs  on  page  100  of  Victor^- 
ian  Poets — "A  wide  leap,  indeed,  from  IMatthew 
Arnold  to  '  Barry  Cornwall,'  under  which  familiar 
and  musical  lyronym  Bryan  AValler  Proctor  has 
had  more  singers  of  his  songs  than  students  of  his 
graver  pages." 

Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  is  not  conscious 
of  having  produced  more  than  one  new  word; 
that  is  the  verb  to  densen.  This  was  used  in  the 
form  of  the  participle  densening,  in  an  essay  called 
"April  Days,"  appearing  first  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  April,  1861,  and  then  reprinted  in  his 
Outdoor  Papers  (1863),  where  the  passage  ap- 
pears (p.  238)  :  "  As  the  spring  comes  on  and 
the  densening  outlines  of  the  elm  give  daily  a  new 
design  for  a  Grecian  urn."      It  seemed  to  him 

78 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   79 

that  there  was  previously  uo  word  to  describe  the 
steadv  filling  out  of  the  delicate  outlines  of  an 
American  elm  in  spring.  He  remembers  writing 
an  especial  appeal  to  Mr.  George  Nicholls,  then 
proof-reader  of  the  Atlantic,  and  strongly  oi> 
posed  to  all  verbal  irregularities ;  and  he  let 
the  innovation  pass. 

Colonel  Higginson  does  not  justify  this  act,  nor 
is  he  inclined  to  think  that  he  would  now  do  such 
a  thing,  but  it  then  seemed  to  him  justifia])le. 
He  knows  of  no  other  author  who  has  used  the 
word,  though  his  sentence  is  quoted  as  authority 
for  it  in  the  Century  Dictionary. 

Thomas  Dunn  English,  author  of  the  world- 
famous  song  of  "  Ben  Bolt,"  says  he  has  always 
found  that  the  number .  of  words  in  our  language 
was  sufficient  to  supply  his  needs,  except  in  one 
instance,  where  he  did  coin  a  word.  That  was 
metropoliarchii.  His  use  of  it  was  in  an  oration 
delivered  on  the  Fourth  of  July,  1898,  before  the 
^Nlayor  and  Common  Council  of  Newark,  N.  J., 
in  which  occurs  the  following  sentence :  "  Now, 
under  the  mask  of  a  republic,  they  [the  French 
people]  form  a  metropoliarchy  governed  by  the 
bourgeoisie,  who  use  the  mob  to  erect  or  pull  down 
dynasties,  change  or  modify  forms  of  government, 
and  do  what  best  suits  their  profit." 

Ernest  Ingersoll's  word  quotated,  to  designate  a 
paragraph  marked  as  quoted  by  the  use  of  quota- 
tion marks,  is  a  good  one.  His  feeling  is  that  you 
quote  the  man  or  the  language  or  thought  by  the 
mere  fact  of  giving  it ;  but  the  act  of  using  the 


80  WORD-COINAGE. 

typographical  signs  "  "  is  quotatiug,  aud  such  a 
paragraph  is  quotated.  This,  I  believe,  is  a  use- 
ful distinction.  There  ought  to  be  also  a  single 
word  to  express  the  idea  of  a  quotation  within  a 
quotation. 

The  only  word  Captain  Alfred  T.  Mahau  can 
be  said  to  have  coined  is  sea  power,  which  is 
rather  a  phrase  than  a  word.  It  was  born  of 
his  preference  for  the  English  "sea"  over  the 
Latin  adjective  "  maritime,"  though  he  recognized 
the  incongruity  of  marrying  ''sea"  to  the  Latin 
word  "power."  There  was,  however,  no  handy 
equivalent,  and  the  Germans  have  been  puzzled 
to  find  one  in  their  tongue.  Afterward  Cap- 
tain Mahan  retained  the  expression  because  he 
thought  its  very  roughness  over  "maritime 
power  "  would  arrest  and  fix  attention  and  so  give 
vogue,  at  which  he  aimed.  The  result  has  justi- 
fied the  expedient. 

He  used  once  by  chance  the  word  ereuflcs.'< — 
"dull,  weary,  eventless  month."  The  word 
slipped  without  premeditation  off  his  pen.  He 
immediately  thought  it  without  authority  and 
found  it  not  in  Worcester.  Nevertheless  he  stuck 
to  it.  "Moneyless,"  "shameless,"  "heartless,"  are 
its  analogies,  and  its  only  recognized  equivalent, 
uneventful,  is  a  stupidity.  First  full  is  afiixed- 
and  then  un  prefixed  to  neutralize  it.  Eventless 
strikes  Captain  ^lahan  as  briefer,  stronger,  and 
much  more  significant.  In  speaking  of  eccentric 
— for  military  operations — he  uses  excentric,  as 
the  secondary  meaning  is  now  most  common.     He 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   81 

doesn't  kuow  that  he  originated  this,  or,  if  he  did 
not,  where  he  got  it. 

Thus  far  the  ordinary  American  language  has 
been  more  than  sufficient  to  let  out  the  ideas 
of  Professor  Henry  Van  Dyke,  according  to  his 
own  deposition.  He  cannot  remember  inventing 
any  words  since  babyhood  ;  and  those  which  were 
coined  in  that  overproductive  period  have  gone 
out  of  use  and  out  of  memory.  But  stay  :  there 
was  once  a  little  river  that  could  not  be  described 
by  any  other  adjective  than  ivater-fally,  and  a 
bird  whose  song  seemed  to  him  wild-flowery.  The 
proof-reader  objected  to  both  of  these  words,  but 
Dr.  Van  Dyke  withstood  him.  Once  he  preached 
a  sermon  on  politethics,  as  distinguished  from 
"  politics."  He  concludes  :  "  But  'tis  a  rare  sub- 
ject, and  the  word  stands  small  chance  of  living 
unless  the  thing  becomes  common." 

I  am  indebted  to  Edgar  Fawcett  for  some  im- 
portant suggestions.  Though  he  has  been  living 
in  Loudon  for  several  years,  most  of  his  books — 
in  fact,  nearly  all — are  stored  away  in  New  York. 
Therefore  he  could  not  refer  to  them,  and  there- 
fore his  account  of  his  coinages  is  not  so  com- 
plete as  it  would  have  been  had  all  his  writings 
been  accessible  to  him.  And  here  I  may  say 
parenthetically  that  the  plan  of  this  book  was 
determined  chiefly  by  the  fact  that  a  surprisingly 
large  number  of  the  first  books  of  our  authors 
are  out  of  print  and  not  to  be  had  for  love  or 
money.  In  these  very  volumes  are  buried  many 
a  verbal  experiment  which  I  am  not  rash  enough 


82  WORD-COINAGE. 

to  affirm  was  the  means  of  placing  them  on  the 
shelves  of  oblivion.  On  the  contrary,  I  am  will- 
ing to  believe  that  such  tentative  efforts  were 
more  or  less  valuable,  but  unappreciated.  So  in 
such  cases  the  memory  of  the  author  is  my  main- 
stay. If  he  chooses  to  forget,  as  some  authors 
do,  all  that  was  contained  in  their  first  books, 
there  is  slight  hope  of  rescuing  from  limbo  any 
of  his  youthful  or  earlier  neologisms.  But  per- 
haps this  is  as  it  should  be. 

Mr.  Fawcett  says  that  our  language  is  greatly 
in  need  of  neologic  stinndation ;  the  greater  num- 
ber of  immigrants  the  better,  though  there 
should  certainly  be  a  kind  of  philological  Castle 
Garden  or  quarantine  where  they  should  be 
forced  to  wait  until  their  health  and  respectability 
are  both  proved.  Mr.  Fawcett  recently  coined 
the  phrase  "  to  hermetize  one's  self,"  used,  as  you 
see,  in  the  Greek  middle  sense;  also  eongeniah 
as  a  substantive,  just  as  we  use  intimates.  This 
fills  a  want,  I  should  say.  So  does  "  viewpoint," 
now  used  often  for  point  of  view,  though,  unless 
he  is  very  much  mistaken,  Mr.  Fawcett  was 
the  first  to  employ  it.  In  the  same  way  he  now 
employs  watchpoint  He  also  recommends 
"guide,"  in  the  sense  of  aid — why  not?  "Help 
me  with  your  g^iide,"  has  a  perfectly  legitimate 
sound.  "  Guidance,"  though  a  euphonious  word, 
is  not  a  monosyllable,  and  the  language  in  mono- 
syllables is  almost  jntiably  poor.  Mr.  Fawcett 
writes :  "I  think  every  writer  ought  to  have  on 
his  conscience  the  coining  of  at  least  five  good 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  83 

ones  (mouosyllables)  each  year.  Then,  too,  the 
word  'spirit' — to  spirit  a  man — that  is,  to  give 
hini  courage,  zeal,  etc.  ;  also  the  verb  to  Jin ; 
'  watch  how  the  fish  fins  the  sea  ' — just  as  we  say 
that  a  bird  wings  the  air — another  good  mono- 
syllable gained,  I  think  ;  but  I  must  pause  here, 
for  lack  both  of  time  and  material." 

Professor  Richard  Burton,  who  is  in  the  Eng- 
lish Chair  at  the  University  of  Minnesota,  says 
people  accuse  him  of  word-coinages,  and  generally 
he  finds  they  are  talking  about  existing  words  or 
those  they  are  ignorant  of.  He  believes,  how- 
ever, that  in  a  few  cases  this  may  be  true. 

In  his  Dog  Literature  he  speaks  of  cynophiles 
(dog-lovers),  and  doesn't  find  it  in  the  diction- 
aries. In  a  paper  on  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  in 
his  recently  published  volume  of  essays.  Lit- 
erary Likings,  he  speaks  of  Stevenson's  having 
a  "hang  for  spiritual  things" — meaning  a  nat- 
ural inclination  or  bias  for  them.  This  is  a  col- 
loquial expression  in  New  England,  but  I  don't 
find  it  illustrated  in  the  dictionaries,  though  it 
may  l^e. 

In  this  same  work  Professor  Burton  speaks  of 
summer  clouds  heading  up  in  a  thunder-storm. 
This  use  of  the  verb  to  head  up  was  familiar  to 
him  from  boyhood,  it  being  often  used,  ])oth  in 
oral  speech  and  writing,  by  his  fi^»ther,  the  late 
Rev.  D.  X.  J.  Burton,  of  the  Park  Church, 
Hartford.  It  is  diflferent  from  the  head-up  of 
the  dictionaries  in  the  sense  of  "  heading  up  " — 
i.  p.,  closing  up — of  a  barrel.     It  means  rather 


84  WORD-COINAGE. 

to  "converge  in"  or  "come  to  a  culmination  in." 
There  is  another  example  in  Literary  Likings. 
The  author  says  :  "  Contemporary  criticism  pro- 
verbially walks  in  Blind  Man's  AlleyJ'  If  that 
figure  and  phrase  has  ever  been  used  before,  he  is 
unaware  of  it. 

Though  to  Helen's  Babies  John  Habberton 
owes  his  first  fame  as  an  author,  he  has  since 
written  much  stronger  and  better  books.  ]\Ir. 
Habberton  says  he  has  tried  to  recall  some  words 
that  were  really  of  his  own  making,  but  his  trou- 
ble has  been  that  every  time  he  succeeded,  as  he 
supposed,  in  making  an  expressive  word,  some 
other  man  had  thought  out  the  same  word — and 
a  long  time  before  Habberton.  For  instance,  he 
used  "  asiotic,"  instead  of  asinine,  and  as  a  milder 
form  of  idiotic.  It  "caught  on"  nicely,  but  he 
is  glad  he  did  not  preempt  a  claim  to  it,  for  he 
afterward  found  it  had  been  in  use  for  years  in 
a  New  England  family.  Then,  trying  to  difter- 
entiate  small  children  of  certain  families,  as  re- 
garded by  their  parents  and  by  other  people,  he 
called  them  angels  and  impgeh — but,  alas  !  a  wise 
old  physician  had  got  ahead  of  him. 

The  contributions  of  Professor  George  Hempl, 
of  the  University  of  ^Michigan,  in  the  way  of  new 
words  are,  as  will  be  seen,  somewhat  technical. 
In  most  cases  it  is  rather  a  new  meaning  than  a 
new  word  out  and  out  Of  the  latter  there  are 
only  vivic,  sonoric,  sonorant 

Vivic  (pronounced  viv'ik)  :  Vivic  words  are 
those  that  designate  the  more  definite  concepts — 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  85 

that  is,  stand  for  objects  (substantives),  qualities 
(adjectives),  or  phenomena  (verbs).  They  are 
contrasted  with  anemic  words. 

Anemic  (pronounced  a-nem^ik)  :  Anemic  words 
are  those  that — (1)  indicate  the  more  or  less  vague 
relations  (of  position,  time,  quantity,  etc.)  existing 
l)etween  more  definite  concepts,  and  are  thus  C(jn- 
j  unctions,  prepositions,  copulative  verbs,  auxiliary 
verbs,  numerals,  the  indefinite  article,  etc.  ;  or 
(2)  simply  refer  to  concepts  that  (a),  as  psycho- 
logic subjects,  have  become  more  or  less  vague 
in  the  mind,  being  personal,  reflexive,  relative, 
and  weak  demonstrative  pronouns,  relative  and 
weak  demonstrative  adverbs,  possessive  and  weak 
demonstrative  adjectives,  and  the  definite  article, 
or  (b)  have  not  yet  assumed  definiteness,  being 
indefinite  and  interrogative  words.  Anemic  words 
are  the  opposite  of  vivic  words. 

Delta :  The  delta  designates  the  pharynx,  the 
mouth  passage,  and  the  nasal  passages  collectively. 
The  German  term  is  Ansatzrohr ;  there  had  thus 
far  been  no  term  in  English,  but  Lloyd  {Journal 
of  Anatomy  and  Phi/siologi/,  31,  p.  233)  has  since 
suggested  stoma. 

Transferred  stress :  The  stress  placed  upon  a 
new  psychologic  predicate  when  repeating  a  sen- 
tence that  has  not  been  understood  or  has  been 
misunderstood.  When  one  has  said,  "  We  were 
not  there,''  and  has  been  misunderstood,  he  may 
repeat  and  tran&fer  the  stress  to  the  word  not ; 
"  We  were  not  there." 

Displaced  stress :     The  new  stress  employed  in 


86  WOKD-COINAGE. 

repetition  or  iu  uttering  phrases  that  are  fre- 
quently used  or  readily  anticipated,  though  there 
is  no  new  psychologic  predicate  :  ''  I  guess  so,"  for 
"  I  guess  so  "  ;  *'  I  reckon  6o,"  heard  in  the  South, 
for  "I  reckon  so"  ;  ''after  all,"  for  "after  a//"  ; 
"excuse  7?ie,"  for  ''excuse  me." 

Conglomeration  :  Conglomeration  is  the  forma- 
tion of  a  word  by  the  growing  together  of  words 
that  chance  often  to  stand  in  juxtaposition  ;  for  ex- 
ample, nevertheless. 

Conglomerate  :     Formed  by  conglomeration. 

Half-  Gothic :  A  mediaeval  book  hand  that 
possesses  some  of  the  characteristics  of  the  strict 
Gothic  hand,  but  is  more  unconstrained. 

Italian  Half -Gothic:  The  handsome  black 
form  that  the  Italian  minuscule  had  assumed  by 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.  A  modern 
imitation  of  the  early  type  is  called  "  Tudor 
Black." 

Sonoric  (pronounced  so-nor'ik)  :  Sonoric  syl- 
lables are  such  as  are  due  to  the  prominence  of 
sonority  in  one  of  their  sounds.  The  German 
term  is  Schallsilbe. 

Dynamic :  Dynamic  syllables  are  such  as  are 
due  to  new  breath  impulses.  The  German  term 
is  Drucksilbe. 

Sonorant:  Short  for  sonorous  consonant — that 
is,  a  nasal  or  liquid. 

Resonant :  A  term  used  to  include  yowels  and 
the  corresponding  yoiceless  sounds  sometimes  para- 
doxically called  "yoiceless  yowels." 

For  fuller  information  as  to  these  words  of 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   87 

Professor  Hempl's  I  refer  the  reader  to  his 
German  Orthography  and  Phonology. 

Charles  Major  recalls  but  one  coined  word  of 
his  own — ■feminology  (bottom  p.  18  of  WJien 
Knighthood  was  in  Floicer).  It  may  be  defined 
as  the  science  of  the  feminine — especially  woman. 
Owing  to  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  subject,  this 
great  science  probably  will  never  be  brought  with- 
in the  category  of  the  "exact"  ;  but  ]\Ir.  Major 
declares  that  he  has,  in  his  life,  known  many  men 
who  would  profit  greatly  by  a  careful  study  of  it. 
His  belief  is  that  if  a  man  of  brains  thoroughly 
understands  a  woman,  and  has  even  a  rudiment- 
ary knowledge  of  the  underlying  principles  of 
feminology,  he  may  live  happily  with  her — and 
that,  after  all,  is  the  great  business  of  life. 

Rev.  Augustus  H.  Strong,  of  the  Rochester 
Theological  Seminary,  is  no  coiner  of  words  and 
could  give  me  nothing  original.  But  he  expressed 
a  wish  to  see  the  word  "  cussedness  "  in  my  list, 
and  suggested  that  if  I  should  write  to  E.  Benja- 
min Andrews,  Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
Nebraska,  for  his  definition  of  the  word  ja^m.  I 
might  secure  a  treasure.  I  did  so,  and  Dr.  An- 
drews sent  me  the  following  definition  :  "  Pass  a 
circular  saw  revolving  five  hundred  times  a  second 
through  a  keg  of  teupeuny  nails.  That  is 
jasmy 

Charles  Battell  Loomis  says  his  word-coinage 
mint  never  did  a  very  rushing  business.  He  is  a 
believer  in  new  words,  if  they  are  built  u]i  logic- 
ally, and  he  likes  to  handle  the  bright,  glistening 


88  WORD-COINAGE. 

words  of  others;  but,  as  before  stated,  there 
seems  never  to  have  been  any  occasion  for  night 
work  at  his  particular  mint,  and  the  only  word 
that  he  recalls  having  put  into  circulation  was 
irreluctant,  which  won  the  indorsement  of  so  nice 
a  handler  of  words  as  Henry  Austin  Clapp,  the 
Shakespearean  scholar.  The  line  in  which  it 
occurs  was  in  some  blank  verse  that  appeared  in 
the  Cosmopolitan : 

"  And  whi  therefrom  the  irreluctant  check," 

is  the  quotation,  he  thinks,  though  he  insists  that 
he  is  never  good  at  quoting.  Anyway,  irreluc- 
tant, in  the  sense  of  not  reluctant,  seems  to  me  a 
good  word  and  a  word  of  pleasing  sound,  and 
stamping  it  with  the  date  of  1900,  Mr.  Loomis 
bids  it  good  speed.  He  warns  me  against  coun- 
terfeit words.  There  are,  he  says,  some  very 
passable  ones  in  circulation,  but  when  they  are 
discovered  they  will  be  withdra^^^l.  The  public 
will  not  be  deceived  long.  Words  that  are  built 
up  illogically  do  not  have  the  proper  ring  nor 
will  they  stand  the  acid  of  time. 

Mrs.  Caroline  A.  Mason  is  unable  to  recall 
more  than  two  words  worth  mentioning  for  which 
she  is  responsible — viz. :  Broodle,  meaning  to  cud- 
dle and  soothe  a  little  child,  and  f rater nia,  as  the 
name  of  a  cooperative  colony,  like  Mr.  Howells' 
Altruria. 

Professor  W.  G.  Sumner  says  the  only  word 
which  he  has  coined  is  societolor/j/.  He  coined 
this   in  an  effort  to  get  a  concrete  term  for  the 


Nf:OLOC!ISMR  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   81) 

Science  of  Society,  and  to  escape  from  the  vague- 
uess  and  ambiguity  of  sociology. 

Clinton  Scollard  fears  his  adventures  in  word- 
coining  are  very  few,  if  any.  Indeed,  at  the 
time  he  replied  to  my  letter  he  could  not  recall 
that  he  could  claim  to  have  fathered  any  word, 
unless  it  be  to  make  an  occasional  noun  into  a 
verb,  which  is  not,  as  he  hints,  entirely  foreign  to 
my  purpose. 

He  remembers  his  use  of  unurns  was  once  com- 
mented upon  as  unique,  but  it  may  be  that  the 
writer  was  mistaken  in  so  characterizing  it.  The 
word  occurs  in  the  lines  : 

'•The  tinv  king  cup  that  upon  the  floor 
Of  emerald  meads  unurns  its  ample  gold.'' 

— Masque  of  March. 

He  has  never  come  upon  war-farer  ^  in  the  dic- 
tionaries, l)ut  thinks  very  likely  it  has  been  used : 

"  And  none  of  the  bold  war-farers,  though 
The  flower  of  the  land  was  there."' 

—  Tallefer  the  Tnnivere. 

Mr.  Scollard  cannot  place  moany,  save  in 

"So  upon  a  morning  moany —  " 

—  The  Bells  of  Fossombroue. 

yet  he  is  sure  others  have  written  of  *'  moany 
mornings,"  lured  by  the  alliteration. 

Edgar  Saltus  really  cannot  recall  all  his  coin- 
ages.    There  are  scores  of  them,  though,  for  he 
always  felt  that  an  author  has  a  right  to  give 
1  War-farer  is  in  some  dictionaries. 


90  WORD-COINAGE. 

alms  to  the  dictionary.  But  such  as  he  has  manu- 
factured have  always  been  made  with  a  view  to 
brevity.  The  most  recent  which  he  recalls  are 
monopolian  and  automobilicalhj,  and  he  signs  him- 
self, "  Neologisticallij  Yours." 

Gertrude  Atherton  believes  she  has  been  guilty 
of  some  coinages,  but  candidly  doubts  if  they 
have  enriched  the  English  language.  One  of 
them  is  littleist,  as  a  more  exact  description  of 
the  would-be  realist.  Another  is  United  States- 
man, in  lieu  of  American — the  latter  being  a 
descriptive  term  to  which  all  North  and  South 
Americans  have  an  equal  right.  Still  another  is 
2)olanc,  in  place  of  icy,  cold.  This  word,  how- 
ever, may  be  found  in  some  dictionaries.  Mrs. 
Atherton  recalls  dubbing  the  "  Theater  of  Arts 
and  Letters,"  which  had  a  brief  existence  in  New 
York  a  few  years  ago,  "  The  Home  for  Incurable 
Amateurs,"  but  she  rightly  supposes  that  this  is 
not  quite  germane. 

Lloyd  Mifflin  kindly  mailed  to  me  a  marked 
copy  of  his  book  of  sonnets,  At  the  Gates  of  Song, 
wherein,  as  well  as  in  his  other  books,  I  find  sev- 
eral pleasing  and  instructive  examples.  In  verse 
one  must  avoid  the  startling  and  unusual  in  lan- 
guage, but  Mifflin's  dread  that  he  has  sinned  in 
using  a  word  here  and  there  better  omitted  is 
more  the  result  of  a  most  refined  sensitiveness 
than  because  there  is  any  practical  reason  for  such 
a  dread.  One  often  needs  a  new  word  to  convey 
his  idea  in  verse,  and,  finding  the  language  fur- 
nishes none,  he  is  then  tempted  to  coin  it. 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   91 

"And  in  the  honeysuckle  rasped  the  wren." 

This  Hue  is  from  one  of  his  sonnets,  and  the  word 
rasped  is  here  used  to  give  the  sense  of  harsh 
scolding  which  the  wren  sometimes  indulges  in. 

"  And  from  Apollvon's  form  malfulgence  dread 
Fell  on  the  hosts." 

The  italicized  word  means  a  baleful  light — a  bad 
brightness. 

"Xo  lathe-turned  limbs,  the  work  of  joj^/'s,  has  won 
This  eminence."' 

The  word  jours  in  the  sonnet  "  To  the  Sculptor 
of  Ladro,"  on  page  44  in  At  the  Gates  of  Song, 
is  a  localism.  The  masons  often  speak  of  a  jur/ 
meaning  an  inferior  workman,  one  who  has  not 
learned  his  trade.  Probal)ly  it  may  have  come 
from  the  French,  a  day  laborer,  unskilled.  It  is 
used  in  half  contempt,  and  in  such  a  sense  Mif- 
flin has  ventured  to  use  it.  He  confesses  that  he 
has  never  seen  it  written  in  verse. 

Needing  a  caption  for  one  of  his  sonnets, — in 
praise  of  the  horse  Pherenicus, — Mifiiin  coined 
the  word  Hippopcean,  song  in  praise  of  a  horse, 
one  might  say.  This  sonnet  appears  in  his  vol- 
ume entitled  Selections  from  Bion,  Moschus,  and 
Bacchylides,  Rendered  into  English  Sonnets,  and 
the  caption  stands :  Pherenicus — a  Hippopcean. 
The  poet  is  constrained  to  tell  me  that  he  is  still 
in  doubt  whether  to  like  it  or  not.  Such  a  word 
is  needed,  however. 

^  Possibly  a  contraction  of  journeyman. 


92  WORD-COINAGE. 

Another  coined  word  of  Mifflin's  is  used  in  a 
sonnet  from  one  of  the  odes  of  Bacchylides — his 
''  Fragment  on  Peace,"  and  one  of  his  most  beau- 
tiful things.  The  usual  translation  from  the 
Greek  is  "in  handles  of  the  shield,"  etc.  Now 
this  word  handles  does  not  give  the  idea  of  the 
shield's  construction.  A  handle  generally  is  a 
projection.  Mifflin  used  the  word  hand-holds. 
This  is  from  a  localism  current  among  workmen 
in  Columbia,  Pa.,  where  the  poet  lives,  and  it  is 
familiar  in  other  places.  They  say:  "Give  me 
a  han'-holt  and  Pll  help  you  lift  it" — that  is, 
give  me  a  place  to  catch  hold  of,  not  necessarily 
a  projection,  but  used  in  case  of  a  long  log,  e.  g., 
or  a  sack  of  wheat.  To  put  such  a  coined  word 
into  the  version  of  a  Greek  ode  seems  rather 
bold,  but  its  appropriateness,  I  think,  is  proved 
by  the  fact  that  his  manuscript  passed  through 
a  very  critical  proof-reader's  hands  and  without 
comment  upon  this  word  or  compound.  This  is 
its  justification.  Such  a  word  is  needed.  To  say 
the  "  handles  of  a  shield  "  is  too  preposterous  ; 
yet  where  is  there  a  word  for  it?  If  hand-hold 
has  been  used  in  a  literary  way,  Mifllin  does  not 
know  of  it.  The  lines  in  which  the  word  occurs 
are  as  follows : 

"  In  hand-holds  of  the  shield,  the  spider  lies 
And  weaves  her  weh  ;  spear-points  that  overcame 
The  warrior  in  the  battle's  red  retreats, 
And  two-edged  swords,  all  rust  and  rest  from  war." 

A  new  word  rouses  many  readers'  ire,  but  it  is 
less  likely  to  do  so  when  an  adequate  amount  of 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  93 

the  context  is  given.  Therefore  it  is  but  fair  to 
all  coDcerned  to  quote  the  whole  line  in  which 
it  occurs,  as  otherwise  such  words  generally 
seem  repellent.  An  expression  little  known,  but 
a  necessary  one  for  the  poet,  is  summer  colt. 
Mifflin  tells  me  an  amusing  story  of  one  of  the 
best  proof-readers  in  America,  a  Yale  man,  I 
believe,  who  had  no  conception  of  the  meaning 
of  summer  colt  and  thought  it  a  colt  born  in  the 
summer,  Webster  defines  it  as  "  the  undulating 
state  of  the  air  near  the  surface  of  the  ground 
when  heated." 

From  a  poem  called  "  Syrinx  and  Pan  "  iNIif- 
flin  makes  this  novel  use  of  a  word  dear  to  Ten- 
nyson : 

"  When  this  keen  nose,  whose  scent  ne'er  failed  me 
yet, 
Sniffed  in  the  hose  a  Xaiad,"  etc. 

From  bocage,  Fr. ;  or  it  might  be  bosk,  from  Gk. 
Booky,  bosket. 

"  And  on  the  mullein's  tip-most  top 
The  thistle  finch  perched." 

In  this  passage,  from  The  Slopes  of  Helicon 
and  Other  Poems,  the  obvious  sense  is  that  of 
the  bird  being  at  the  extremest  point.  ^Mifflin 
uses  aureole  as  a  \evh,  fulgence  as  a  noun,  "fanged 
my  hand,"  said  of  an  adder,  unthoughfed  and 
winiched — i.  e.,  unhonored.  He  also  speaks  of 
faunian — like  a  faun's  nature.  It  might  mean 
libidinous,  in  the  sense  of  having  no  moral   re- 


94  WORD-COIXAGE, 

sponsibility.  A  faun's  nature  was  a  step  above 
a  satyr's.     In  the  lines, 

"From  the  dim  sea's  unknowable  extreme.''^  ■ 

"Some  peak  unscalable  of  high  achieve." 

Mifflin  has  used  words  something  in  the  manner 
in  which  Shakespeare  used  words.  I  mean  the 
manner  is  his.  To  recapitulate  a  little :  Jours 
(pronounced  jurs)  are  unskilled  day  laborers  who 
yet  profess  to  know  a  trade,  ^yood-butcher  is 
used  contemptuously  by  skilled  carpenters  when 
they  speak  of  a  man  who  works  at  carpentering, 
but  who  has  never  learned  the  trade.  Other 
people  might  call  him  a  botch.  But  "jours" 
has  not  always  this  bad  sense.  It  is  sometimes 
said  without  opprobrious  intention,  being  a  local 
slang  word  in  Columbia,  Pa. 

If  all  my  correspondents  had  been  as  conscien- 
tious and  explicit  as  Lloyd  Mifflin,  who  has  been 
likened  to  Landor,  ^latthew  Arnold,  and  Shelley 
for  the  exquisite  and  noble  perfection  of  his  art, 
this  collection  would  have  been  greatly  enhanced 
as  a  treasure-trove. 


CHAPTER   VI. 

NEOLOGISMS. — (  Continued.) 

The  only  word  the  late  Professor  John  Fiske 
remembered  coining  is  a  very  technical  one, 
namely,  deanthropomorphization ;  which  is  duly 
defined  in  the  Century  Dictionary  as  follows : 
"  The  art  of  freeing  from  anthropomorphic  attri- 
butes or  conceptions — e.  g. :  '  There  is  one  con- 
tinuous process  (of  knowing)  which  (if  I  may  be 
allowed  to  invent  a  rather  formidable  word  in 
imitation  of  Coleridge)  is  best  described  as  a  con- 
tinuous process  of  deanthropomorphization,  or  the 
stripping  off  of  the  anthropomorphic  attributes 
with  which  primeval  philosophy  the  unknown 
Power  is  manifested  in  phenomena.'  " — J.  Fiske, 
Cosmic  Philosophij,  i.,  176. 

Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  does  not  think  he  has 
ever  invented  a  word,  unless  it  is  the  word  cris|> 
ino-,  in  these  lines  from  a  lyric  called  "Mem- 
ory" 


"The  wind  came  briskly  up  this 


way 


J 1 


Crisping  the  brook  beside  the  road. 

He  may  have  used  many  words  in  an  uncon- 
ventional sense,  but  I  refer  the  reader  to  his  works 
for  such  instances.     For  centuries  crisp  has  been 

95 


96  WORD-COIXAGE. 

used  as  a  verb.  Speuser  speaks  of  ''  her  yellow 
locks  crisped  like  goldeu  wire."  This  is  a  liue 
from  TenDyson : 

"To  watch  the  crisping  ripples  on  the  beach." 

And  IMaurice  Hewlett,  in  his  great  romance, 
Richard  Yea  and  Kay,  has  this  phrase  on 
page  251  :  "  crisping  and  uncrisping  her  little 
hands." 

W.  J.  Henderson,  musical  critic  of  the  New 
York  Ti)neSj  thinks  there  should  be  a  word  to 
designate  that  part  of  a  discussion  or  sermon  or 
essay  in  which  the  propositions  are  made ;  and 
he  is  willing  to  father  the  word  propository.  It 
would  give  us  an  antithetic  term  to  "  expository." 
As  it  is,  we  are  forced  to  use  propositional,  which 
is  awkward  at  times.  If  we  may  say  '*  exposit- 
ory," why  not  "  propository  "  ?  It  is  legitimately 
derived  and  satisfies  the  demands  of  purity  and 
precision  in  diction. 

Henry  E.  Krehbiel,  musical  critic  of  the  Xew 
York  Tribune,  says  that  though  he  may  have  in- 
dulged in  the  questionable  privilege  of  coining 
words,  it  has  never  been  done  consciously  and  he 
could  not  make  a  list  from  his  books  if  he  tried. 
He  remembers  but  one  word  of  his  own,  and  that 
he  has  used  in  lectures,  but  not  in  print — isomodal, 
as  referring  to  the  distribution  of  musical  modes 
throughout  the  world.  He  fancies  it  is  correctly 
made,  but  he  does  not  aim  at  such  things. 

Another  famous  musical  critic,  James  G.  Hu- 
ueker,  once  perpetrated  vividity,  an  insane  and 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LlViyO  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   97 

Lewis  Carroll-like  combinatiou  of  "avidity"  and 
"vivid,"  but  he  protests  that  this  doesn't  count, 
nor  does  it,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  others  have 
used  the  word  and  it  is  in  the  dictionaries.  Mr. 
Huneker  urged  me  to  try  his  friend  Vance 
Thompson,  who  "  has  a  genius  for  verbal  orches- 
trations." 

I  already  had  heard  from  Mr.  Thompson. 
He  says  that  every  one  is  guilty  of  "coining" 
now  and  then.  When  one's  thought  does  not  fit 
into  any  of  the  familiar  forms,  it  is  quite  natural 
that  one  should  filch  a  matrix  from  the  Greek, 
German,  or  French  and  make  it  serve.  Probably 
he  has  done  as  much  of  this  as  any  one — and  he 
is  not  at  all  proud  of  it.  He  would  be  very 
sorry,  indeed,  to  have  his  philological  sins  posted 
on  the  door  of  the  Town  Hall.  The  words  that 
create  themselves,  as  it  were,  and  slip  into  the 
language  are  different.  They  deserve  abundant 
welcome.  There  has  been  a  tremendous  influx 
of  good,  sound  words  from  the  ranches,  the  rail- 
ways, the  mines,  the  slums,  but  it  would  be  hard 
to  say  who  coined  them.  They  are  not  English  ; 
they  are  not  quite  American  ;  they  are  the  raw 
stuff  out  of  which  the  American  language  is  being 
made.  Thompson  says  he  would  gladly  send  me 
a  list  of  the  coinages  for  which  he  may  be  justly 
held  guilty, — they  might  serve  as  horrible  exam- 
ples,— but  none  of  them  comes  to  his  pen  and  the 
task  of  disinterring  them  is  one  to  shudder  at. 

Vance  Thompson  is  really  a  high  priest  of  ne- 
ology.     "Every  age,"   he  says,   "must  curl  its 


98  WORD-COINAGE. 

metaphors  afresh.  Out  of  the  old  symbols  the 
color  fades  day  by  day,  and  it  is  the  poet's  busi- 
ness to  create  new  ones."  Could  I  get  at  all 
his  work  and  were  I  to  repeat  some  of  his  impro- 
visations in  language  I  should  forever  be  un- 
shriven  of  the  angels.  He  gives  the  world  noth- 
ing that  is  slovenly  or  ramshackle,  however. 
The  chief  of  the  United  States  Secret  Service  says 
that  the  best  counterfeiters  are  always  men  of  fine 
education,  with  technical  skill  to  match  their 
brains.  This  is  usually  true  of  verbal  inventors, 
and  is  applicable  to  Thompson.  In  French  Por- 
traits, Thompson's  pet  word  is  "  vagrora,"  though 
he  did  not  evolve  it.  He  also  speaks  of  "  savor- 
some  French  words,"  "  He  made  autolatnj  a  re- 
ligion," and  several  times  rouses  "sib"  from  its 
long  sleep  in  the  dictionaries. 

I  must  perforce  refer  in  these  chapters  to  cer- 
tain authors  who,  though  they  may  not  have  pro- 
duced a  new  word,  either  have  tried  to  do  so  or 
are  not  opposed  to  words  simply  because  they  are 
new.  For  instance,  Donald  G.  Mitchell  (Ik 
Marvel),  though  he  recalls  none  of  his  "  possible 
offenses"  in  the  line  of  new  coinage  of  words, 
does  not  doubt  he  has  committed  such — and 
would  do  so  again,  if  only,  without  sacrifice  of 
meaning,  a  short  word  were  to  supplant  a  long 
one,  or  a  single  word  stand  for  a  double  one. 
Yet  he  has  a  large  horror  of  these  new  coinages 
which  spring  from  scholastic  bounce  or  pedagogic 
conceit. 

Robert  J.  Burdette  has  made  a  little  studv  of 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   99 

coined  words  himself,  always  with  disappoiuting 
results.  He  says,  after  discovering  them,  he 
always  runs  across  them  somewhere  about  one 
hundred  years  l)efore  the  birth  of  the  inventor. 
He  once  coined  a  name,  away  back  in  1876,  for 
one  of  his  humorous  characters — Bilderback. 
He  put  the  Bilderback  family  in  jocose  print  for 
several  years.  One  night,  about  1887,  he  lec- 
tured in  Salem,  X.  J.,  and  told  one  of  his  Bil- 
derback stories.  The  audience  was  convulsed 
with  more  mirth  than  the  story  called  for.  After 
the  lecture  he  was  introduced  to  about  a  dozen 
Bilderbacks,  who  enjoyed  his  story  more  than 
any  one  else. 

F.  Marion  Crawford,  in  his  delightful  novel- 
ette, A  Rose  of  Yesterday — isn't  it? — puts  the 
word  jukes  into  the  mouth  of  a  boy,  and  says  the 
lad  never  heard  the  word,  and  that  it  was  what 
the  Germans  call  a  "nature  word."  But  Bur- 
dette  says  it  was  an  expletive  of  his  when  he  was 
a  bov — it  was  common  enough  in  Illinois  back  in 
the  fifties  of  the  last  century,  and  he  used  it  in 
print  twelve  years  ago  in  Claymont  Sketches. 
Burdette's  idea  is  that  new  words  are  invented 
or  coined  out  of  old  material,  but  that  it  is  a  dif- 
ficult thing  to  discover  the  inventor.  He  says, 
"  the  new  word  usually  grows  like  Topsy,"  who 
claimed  she  never  was  born.  All  the  genial 
humorist's  efforts  at  coining  words,  he  jauntily 
admits,  have  turned  out  to  l)e  merely  bits  of  car- 
penter and  joiner  work.  He  fears  his  excellent 
memory  has  invented  most  of  his  new  words. 


100  WORD-COINAGE. 

John  Burroughs  reports  that  he  has  never 
coined  a  word,  at  least  he  does  not  recall  one. 
He  has  found  the  existing  vocabulary  quite  suffi- 
cient for  his  purpose.  Several  years  ago  he 
thought  he  had  made  a  new  word  in  "  anthropo- 
centric,"  man  as  the  center,  but  found  later  that 
the  word  had  been  used  by  others. 

Some  years  ago  Kev.  Josiah  Strong  made  an 
exception  to  his  life-long  rule  to  avoid  coining 
new  words  by  evolving  the  word  "expellent," 
which  he  used  in  Our  Country,  in  the  chapter  on 
''Immigration."  Having  discussed  the  attract- 
ive influences  of  the  United  States,  he  turned 
to  the  expellent  influences  of  Europe.  The  word 
did  not  appear  in  any  dictionary  which  was  at 
hand,  and  he  supposed  it  was  his  own  coinage — 
justified  by  the  lack  of  any  word  to  express  his 
idea.  He  found  it,  however,  included  in  the 
Century  Dictionary,  so  that  even  this  word 
affords  no  exception. 

R.  K.  Munkittrick  does  not  know  that  he  ever 
coined  a  word — that  is,  invented  one.  But  he 
has  made  such  combinations  as  grieflet,  to  rhyme 
with  handkerchieflet ;  also  soblet,  to  rhyme  with 
goblet  and  corn-coblet,  and  he  once  spoke  of 
something  or  other,  I  have  forgotten  just  what, 
as  being  the  summer  of  our  disconcircustent.  He 
has  called  the  Harpers'  place  "the  Harperion 
Spring,"  and  has  sung  of  the  time  when  the 
Houghtons  will  cease  from  Mifflin,  etc.  He  once 
wrote  a  story  called  The  Harrhhoffer,  in  which 
he  introduced  such  things   as  the  shampoodle,  the 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  101 

kanga-rooster,  the  ipecactus  tree,  the  vamoose,^  the 
baked  verbena,  the  rediugote,  the  puccoon,  etc. 
Also  in  A  Day  in  Waxland,  the  icax  dollphin, 
the  icax  tapir,  the  icax  minster  palace,  and  so 
on,  until  the  story  comes  to  a  waxed  end.  These 
stories  are  pulilished  by  the  Harpers  in  a  book 
called  The  Moon  Prince  and  Other  Xabobs.  The 
author  mentions  the  Cape  Codger  and  the  corifty 
u'hifty  in  a  book  bearing  the  curious  title,  The 
Slambangaree  and  Other  Stories,  published  by 
R.  H.  Russell. 

James  Whitcomb  Riley  coined  what  the  small 
boy  would  call  a  "  corker "  in  "  The  Baggedy 
Man."  Other  surprises  of  this  kind  may  be 
found  iu  Riley's  dialect  poems. 

Mrs.  M.  K.  Van  Rensellaer  avows  that  she 
has  not  contributed  to  the  language  any  coined 
words.  She  did  use  walking-side  for  sidewalk,  in 
the  Goede  Vromv,  because  it  was  a  family  joke 
originating  ui  some  childish  error,  but  she  thinks 
it  is  hardly  woith  being  erected  into  word-coinage. 

It  has  always  been  the  aim  of  ]Molly  Elliot 
Seawell  not  to  coin  words  in  writing.  Having 
had  the  advantages  of  a  good  early  training  in 
the  English  classics,  she  soon  found  out  that 
there  was  a  good  plain  English  word  for  all  the 
ideas  she  had  or  was  likely  to  have,  and  she  has 
made  it  her  business  to  try  and  find  out  that 
word. 

^  This  brings  to  mind  Uncle  Eben  Holden's  strange 
wild  creature  of  the  Xorthem  woods,  which  he  called 
the  sivift. 


102  WORD-COINAGE. 

In  writing  dialect,  though,  as  in  her  Virginia 
stories,  this  author  has,  in  order  to  make  it  true 
to  life,  had  her  negroes  coin  words.  As  the 
reader  knows,  perhaps,  the  negroes,  except  the 
illiterate  ones  of  the  backwoods,  are  unique,  if 
not  admirable,  word-coiners.  They  love  to  use 
long  words,  and  they  introduce  a  word  wonder- 
fully like  the  one  they  are  after,  and  in  the  same 
sense,  so  that  it  conveys  a  perfectly  good  mean- 
ing. Mrs.  Seawell  hardly  knows  whether  all  the 
words  she  puts  into  the  mouths  of  her  negroes 
are  of  her  own  invention  or  recollections  of  her 
childhood  on  an  old  estate  in  Virginia.  Some  are 
her  own — reckelsome,  for  reckless  ;  furgitious,  for 
forgetful ;  discumfusin',  for  confusing,  etc.  These 
may  be  found  in  her  novels,  such  as  Children  of 
Destiny,  etc.  In  them  she  has  strictly  followed 
the  negro  manner  of  making  the  sense  right,  and 
the  sound  approximately  so. 

Miss  Ruth  Putnam  thinks  it  may  be  that  she 
does  coin  words  in  conversation — as,  for  instance, 
insinuendo,  she  believes  she  coined.  But  she 
would  carefully  weed  out  such  individualities 
from  printed  works,  as  she  does  not  think  words 
should  be  treated  lightly. 

Professor  Curtis  Hidden  Page  scarcely  imag- 
ines he  has  anything  to  contribute  to  my  investi- 
gation, unless  it  be  the  term  do^et-verse,  made  on 
the  model  of  *' closet-drama."  He  gives  the  fol- 
lowing for  what  they  may  be  worth  :  soul-drama,  as 
a  term  to  designate  the  highest  form  of  psychologic 
drama,    such   as   Browning's ;    and    Helen,    the 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  103 

world-beauty,  possibly  suggested  by  an  unconscious 
thought  of  Goethe',  U-eatment  of  Helen  and  so  of 
the  German  compounds  in   Welt. 

The  veteran  poet,  Joel  Benton,  does  not  re- 
member all  his  verbal  coinages.  He  has  the 
impression  that  he  was  the  lirst  person  to  use 
hypethral  in  the  sense  (adjectively)  of  out-of- 
doors,  as  hypethral  writings.  Soon  after  doing 
so  he  found  Lowell  doing  the  same  thing.  Ben- 
ton also  has  spoken  of  dendral  growths — meaning 
woody  growths.  Lately  he  used  the  word  poet- 
hood—''  in  his  early  poethood, "  as  one  might  say 
"in  his  early  priesthood." 

In  reference  to  hypethral  and  dendral,  Benton 
asked  Richard  Grant  AYhite  what  he  thought  of 
them.  The  latter  said :  "  Dendral,  whether  in 
the  dictionaries  or  not,  is  all  right.  I  shouldn't 
hesitate  a  moment  about  using  it.  As  to  hype- 
thral, in  the  sense  named,  I  must  think  a  while." 

But  Benton  never  saw  the  eminent  scholar 
afterward.  And  what  Lowell  did  seems  to  Ben- 
ton as  authoritative  as  what  White  might  have 
thought.  Probably  most  poets  would  accept  den- 
dral without  a  murmur  of  dissent. 

Professor  Henry  A.  Beers  affirms  that  there 
are  no  serious  word-coinages  in  his  published 
works.  On  page  192  of  his  Ways  of  Yale  he 
proposed  the  adjective  (jemmy  (from  The  Gem, 
Phila.,  1842),  as  descriptive  of  the  style  of  the 
old  annuals.  On  page  36  of  the  same  book  he 
ventures  the  noun  chumlock,  for  the  relations  of 


104  WORD-COINAGE. 

college  chums  or  room-mates,  on  the  analogy  of 
wedlock. 

On  page  174  of  the  same  book  he  uses  the 
word  spJiinxy — dealing  in  riddles,  which  is,  so  far 
as  he  knows,  original.  Somewhere  he  has  em- 
ployed a  verl)  of  his  own  invention — troll — to 
ride  on  a  trolley  car,  but  I  cannot  refer  to  the 
passage. 

In  his  Suburban  Pastoral,  page  3,  Professor 
Beers  uses  the  expression  "  nepotic  suggestions," 
of  a  man  who  looks  as  if  he  had  a  number  of 
uncles.  Webster  gives  nepotic,  though  with  a 
different  meaning.  These  are  all  playful  sug- 
gestions, not  seriously  proposed  mintages.  Ad- 
jectives such  as  sandal-woody  and  tube-rosey,  for  an 
.Oriental-looking  young  woman ;  or  "  Tulking- 
horny  existence,"  from  Lawyer  Tulkinghorn,  in 
Dickens'  Bleak  House,  the  professor  has  fre- 
quently hit  upon  for  the  nonce  ;  but  their  employ- 
ment is  too  special  for  extended  connections. 

In  his  day  Rupert  Hughes  has  coined  numer- 
ous words — that  is,  he  has  lifted  them  from  the 
Greek  and  Latin  to  our  language ;  but  the  fact 
that  he  can  remember  scarcely  any  of  them  shows, 
he  argues,  how  little  weight  they  must  have  had. 
He  had  no  time  to  hunt  for  any  and  could  re- 
member only  three :  anecdotage,  of  the  reminis- 
cence period  of  old  age  (he  would  not  swear  that 
it  is  original  with  him)  ;  dlalectophobia  and  dia- 
lectophobes,  of  the  enmity  and  enemies  to  the  use 
of  dialect,  and  viceversation,  a  pedantic  form  of 
topsy-turvyism.      Hughes  insists  that    these  are 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    105 

merely  whimsical  and  of  uo  earthly  use.  He  asks 
if  I  have  seen  C.  C.  Converse's  word  fJion  in  the 
Standard  Dictionary.  Yes,  and  there's  a  useful 
coinage  !     Here  is  the  definition  : 

"A  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  common 
gender,  a  contracted  and  solidified  form  of  that 
one,  proposed  in  1858  as  a  substitute  in  cases 
where  the  use  of  a  restrictive  pronoun  involves 
either  inaccuracy  or  obscurity,  or  its  non-employ- 
ment necessitates  awkward  repetition.  Examples  : 
'  If  Harry  or  his  wife  comes,  I  will  be  on  hand  to 
meet  thon'  (/.  e.,  that  one  who  comes).  'Each 
pupil  must  learn  thon's  lesson  (z.  e.,  his  or  her 
own).'  " 

The  only  word  to  which  ]\lrs.  Theodosia  Pick- 
ering Garrison  lays  the  slightest  claim  in  the 
matter  of  coinage  is  infurled,  and  her  only  reason 
for  supposing  it  to  be  a  new  word,  or  rather  a 
condonation  of  old  ones,  is  because  she  is  unable 
to  find  it  in  the  dictionaries  she  has  at  hand. 
She  uses  it  in  some  verses  entitled  a  "  Ballade  of 
Books,"  in  the  follo^^ing  sense  : 

' '  Let  it  be  worth  great  sums  or  naught, 
In  paper  bound,  or  calf  infurled. ' ' 

Alfred  Ayres,  so  far  as  he  can  discover,  has 
used  four  words  not  found  in  the  dictionaries,  and 
they  are:  tonist,  precisionist,  slap-dasher,  and 
sivosh. 

Marion  Harland  recalls  but  two  words  coined 
by  herself.     One,  which  has  passed  into  general 


106  WORD-COINAGE. 

use,  is  betiveenitie>i — denoting  the  gaps  between 
stated  tasks  which  may  be  utilized  by  the  eco- 
nomical housewife.  The  other,  chivy,  was  freely 
applied  during  the  Civil  War  to  an  indefinable 
reckless  slouch  of  appearance  and  manner  char- 
acteristic of  so-called  chivalric,  original  seces- 
sionists. 

Rev.  Charles  Frederick  Goss,  author  of  The 
Redemption  of  David  Corson,  once  published  a 
little  volume  called  The  Philopolid,  or  city-lover, 
a  word  of  Dr.  Goss'  coinage.  This  is  the  single 
word  he  has  coined  in  all  his  life,  and  he  believes 
it  will  have  a  mission.  Some  such  word  seemed 
to  be  needed  to  express  the  growing  consciousness 
of  our  relationship  to  the  city  of  our  birth  or 
adoption.  He  writes:  "I  shall  be  very  happy 
and  grateful  to  have  you  incorporate  it  in  your 
volume  and  thus  give  it  a  wider  circulation." 

Mrs.  Ruth  McEnery  Stuart  has  made  only 
an  occasional  playful  turn  by  which  a  word  has 
gained  a  sort  of  freshness,  or  accent,  perhaps, 
such  as  unpretty  for  not  pretty,  altitadinous  for 
altitudinal ;  unless  so  light  a  thing  as  procrastina- 
tive,  meaning  the  slow,  always  procrastinating 
native,  otherwise  the  tinkering  mountaineer,  be 
included. 

William  O.  Stoddard,  the  beloved  writer  of 
books  for  juvenile  readers,  to  the  very  suggestion 
of  word-coinage  answers,  no,  sir!  but  with  a 
sly  twinkle  in  his  eye  ;  and  a  liberal  pinch  of  salt 
(Attic  preferred)  should  be  taken  with  his  remark 
that  he  wishes  to  be  considered  as  resenting  the 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    107 

implied  imputation,  and  that  he  would  not  be 
guilty  of  such  a  thing.  He  will  not  drag  me 
into  a  dispute  by  saying  that  there  are  too  many 
words  already  and  that  neither  he  nor  I  can 
know  them  all  as  it  is,  let  alone  piling  on  more. 

In  Stoddard's  own  words :  "  Those  ridiculous 
monsters,  the  dictionaries,  make  a  nefarious  liv- 
ing out  of  the  existing  })ernicious  overplus  of 
verbiage.  Every  hundred-foot  skeleton  they  dig 
up  is  a  word-breeder.  So  are  what  they  call  the 
sciences  and  the  newly  invented  stars.  Greek 
has  become  a  bankrupt  nomenclatologicalidic 
mine.  So  is  the  shattered  tongue  of  the  ancient 
Romans,  if  such  a  people  ever  did  really  exist, 
which  I  doubt.  I  hate  Csesar,  anyway,  for  hav- 
ing been  the  first  to  set  agoing  the  practice  of 
European  touristing.  He  did  France,  Germany, 
Switzerland,  Belgium,  etc.,  and  came  to  grief 
among  the  British  watering-places.  I'm  glad  he 
did,  and  that  they  killed  him  for  it  when  he 
came  home  to  blow  about  his  tour.  I  wish  you 
all  success  in  your  undertaking,  but  in  my  opin- 
ion the  list  of  new-born  words  you  speak  of  are 
but  as  Chinese  children — only  a  few  of  them  are 
worth  keeping.     You  may  drown  the  others." 

Edward  Everett  Hale  would  have  said  off- 
hand that  he  had  never  made  up  any  words,  but 
his  wife  told  him  he  had  made  up  a  good  many. 
There  are  more  than  a  million  words  of  all  sorts 
in  the  standard  edition  of  his  works.  He  called 
George  III.  a  Brummagem  Louis  XIV.,  "  but," 
he  avers,  "Brummagem  is  no  word." 


108  WORD-COINAGE. 

Dr.  Hale's  opiuion  is  offset  by  the  dictiouaries, 
which  give  brummagem  both  as  a  uoun  and  au 
adjective.  The  word  bears  evidence  of  being  a 
corruption  of  Birmingham.  As  a  noun,  it  means 
one  of  the  cheap  imitations  made  at  Birming- 
ham ;  hence  an  imitation — sham.  As  an  adjec- 
tive, in  usage,  it  means  cheap  and  showy ;  spu- 
rious; bogus;  specially  made  at  Birmingham, 
England.  In  a  book  called  The  Art  of  Conver- 
sation, "brummagen"  should  have  been  "brum- 
magem." 

Dr.  Hale  was  on  Funk  and  Wagnall's  Com- 
mittee of  Revision  when  they  made  the  Standard 
Dictionary.  His  duty,  with  the  others,  was  to 
decide  as  to  new  words.  He  writes:  "I  con- 
demned 95  per  cent,  of  those  submitted  by  the 
workmen  on  the  dictionary.  But  the  firm  wanted 
to  put  in  all  the  words  they  could.  So  they  put 
in  all  we  condemned — with  some  sort  of  printer's 
mark  which  meant,  '  condemned  by  the  commit- 
tee of  revision.'"  Dr.  Hale  thinks  one  might 
make  a  good  list  of  new  words  by  going  over  this 
dictionary  and  noting  the  words  so  condemned. 

A  Harvard  professor  relates  to  me  a  diverting 
anecdote,  which  goes  to  show  that  the  making 
of  dictionaries  is  not  altogether '  free  from  queer 
processes  of  induction.  About  ten  years  ago  the 
professor  sent  to  a  New  York  firm  then  compil- 
ing a  new  dictionary  the  word  repolonization  (in 
reference  to  Poland),  which  had  been  used  by  one 
of  his  friends.     He  received  the  following  reply : 

''You  sent  to  us  a  word  for  our  new^  diction- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHOKS.    109 

ary.  The  word  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  book 
in  the  Astor  Library.  In  what  sense  do  you  use 
it?  I  derive  it  from  the  following  :  prefix  re: 
pola,  -o/.o?,  a  pole,  and  >t^oj.  I  wash — to  rewash 
the  poles  of  an  electric  battery." 

This  etymology,  however,  was  not  published. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

NEOLOGISMS. — (^Continued.) 

It  might  be  supposed  that  in  the  Southland, 
where  nature  is  prodigal  with  her  perfumes  and 
colors,  where  people  express  themselves  with 
warmth  and  enthusiasm,  many  new  words  would 
spring  into  existence.  But  in  this  respect  the 
tendencies  are  rather  conservative  than  otherwise. 
Those  are  old  Southern  principles,  sah.  Southern 
principles !  Yet  the  Southern  writers  have  done 
their  share,  not  only  in  naturalizing  foreign  words, 
particularly  from  the  French,  but  in  handing 
down  autochthonous  verbal  forms. 

In  order  to  facilitate  my  research  and  corres- 
pondence among  Louisiana  authors  I  enlisted  the 
cooperation  of  my  friend,  i\Iiss  Helen  Pitkin,  of 
New  Orleans,  formerly  the  editor  of  the  Woman's 
Department  of  the  Times-Democrat  in  that  historic 
city.  Miss  Pitkin,  en  passant,  is  one  of  the  noted 
beauties  of  the  South,  and  among  her  kinsfolk  of 
the  past  were  those  two  widely  different  personal- 
ities, Lord  Byron  and  Margaret  Fuller.  Her 
own  work,  both  in  poetry  and  prose,  bespeaks  rare 
gifts  of  mind  and  is  redolent  with  the  charm  of  a 
beautiful  soul, 
no 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    Ill 

Like  marble  melting  into  mi.st 

is  a  line  from  one  of  her  poems  which  will  haunt 
my  mind  forever. 

Professor  William  B.  Smith,  of  Tulane  Uni- 
versity, has  made  a  few  real  additions — not  mere 
ghost-words — to  the  English  language.  Such  are 
homeoidal  (included  in  the  Standard  Dictionary), 
like-shaped,  like-constituted  throughout  ;  said  of 
any  geometrical  extent  any  part  of  which  may  be 
moved  (or  thought  as  moved)  freely  in  any  way, 
without  any  distortion,  throughout  the  whole. 
For  example,  a  straight  line,  a  circle,  a  plane, 
a  sphere-surface,  our  Euclidian  Space — all  are 
homeoidal. 

HoineoidaUiii, — the  Gernmn  zummmen-hangend, 
usually  rendered  connected, — said  of  a  surface  or 
higher  spatial  extent,  to  indicate  how,  in  what  de- 
gree, it  hangs  together — how  many  cross-cuts  may 
be  made  from  point  to  point  of  its  border  without 
its  falling  into  two  distinct  pieces. 

Compendence,  compendency — property  of  being 
compendent. 

Elbert  Hubl:)ard,  the  presiding  genius  of  the 
Roycroft  Shop  at  East  Aurora,  X.  Y.,  is  straight- 
forward about  the  matter.  He  says  that  beyond 
a  doubt  he  has  coined  about  400  words.  He 
has  kept  no  track  of  them  and  made  no  note  of 
them,  however,  and  to  hunt  them  up  would  take 
about  a  month's  steady  reading.  Here  is  one  of 
his  words  :  Bomeikitis,  the  habit  of  reading  news- 
paper clippings  about  yourself;    obviously   sug- 


112  WORD-COINAGE. 

gested  by  the  surname  of  Henry  Romeike,  the 
founder  of  the  first  newspaper-cutting  bureau. 

When  that  intellectual  Nimrod,  Louis  M.  El- 
shemus,  fails  to  find  in  the  Black  Forest  of  litera- 
ture verbal  game  that  satisfies  his  mental  taste, 
he  bags  it  on  his  own  preserves,  so  to  speak. 
Elshemus,  who  is  a  record-breaking  sonneteer  as 
well  as  a  successful  painter,  had  what  he  calls  the 
"grievous  fault"  to  coin  words  when  he  was 
younger.  On  publishing  his  writings  these  verbal 
novelties  were  tabooed,  as  by  that  time  he  had  be- 
come aware  that  it  is  best  to  use  pure  simple 
English. 

However,  a  few  words  which  he  left  as  they 
were  coined  by  him  are  in  his  published  volumes. 
One  of  them  is  fidmant.  This  he  contracted  from 
"fulminant,"  in  order  to  have  a  w^ord  which 
would  express  better  what  he  wished  to  depict ; 
also  for  euphony's  sake.  It  appears  in  his  Lady 
Vere  and  Other  Narratives — viz. : 

"  Then  Kalph  stared  out  o'er  bay 
And  distant  banks  of  cloud,  fulmant  in  foam, 
Trembling  aslow,  like  Arctic  bears  aplay 
Upon  some  floe  in  turquoise  stretch  of  sea. " 

The  crisp  elisions  and  frugal  economies  of  expres- 
sion in  the  foregoing  extract  are  quite  character- 
istic of  Elshemus  and  are  not  unlike  some  of 
Bloodgood  H.  Cutter's  immensely  aboriginal  lines. 
Desiring  a  word  to  give  the  peculiar  state  of 
the  aforementioned  cloud-banks  on  a  June  day, 
Elshemus  sought  in  vain  for  an  Anglo-Saxon  root 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    113 

that  would  be  harmonious  with  the  word  "  foam," 
which  he  was  obliged  to  preserve  as  the  most  im- 
portant word — since  to  the  poet  those  cloud-l)anks 
seemed  to  send  up  foam  out  of  their  ])ulk.  There- 
fore the  Latin  word  for  thunder  was  resorted  to, 
and  he  invented  a  verb  from  falmen  to  suit  his 
purpose.  Also  fulmant',  with  the  accent  on  the 
last  syllable,  is  intentional,  so  as  to  give  the  slow, 
tumbling  movement  of  those  clouds  adequate  ex- 
pression. 

According  to  Elshemus,  if  any  one  watches  such 
cloud-banks  with  their  foam-crests,  and  listens 
long  enough,  he  will  hear  in  his  mind's  ear  a  faint 
thunder,  "  which,  of  course,  is  caused  by  the  im- 
agination." However,  he  says,  this  is  easily 
accounted  for,  "since  the  foam  above  the  clouds 
seems  to  be  puffed  upward  as  though  like  the 
clouds  above,  an  explosion  of  powder."  This  is 
too  deep  for  me,  but  I  hope  it  is  clear  to  the 
reader. 

The  following  are  "actual  creations"  of  Elshe- 
mus's.  While  listening  to  birds  he  tries  to  invent 
a  word  to  express  the  manner  of  their  singing. 
In  the  volume  previously  quoted,  in  a  sonnet, 
"  The  Nighthawk,"  two  verbs  appear  which  con- 
vey as  clearly  as  is  possible  to  the  author  the  way 
the  male  and  the  female  exchange  thoughts : 

"      ...     Then  flies  the  nighthawk  high, 
"With  eves  intent  on  prey  in  nooks  and  trees  ; 
"While  shrill  creheoking  as  he  wheels  at  ease, 
His  mate  joins  !    When  they    meet,  pujiute   they 
cry — 


114  WORD-COINAGE. 

Then  o'er  the  dusk-tinged  trees  they  wing  around, 
While   wood-birds   flute   and   sing  with   heavenly 
sound !  ' ' 

Another  is  iu  his  *'  Sougs  of  Spring  " — viz. : 

"The  red-black  marsh-bird,  sweet  bree-reelng 
In  joy,  then  swaj^ing — swiftly  fleeing." 

Again,  in  the  same  volume  : 

"  The  rippling  2;;'i^^gr-/ri^^er  chirp     .     .     ." — 

this  of  a  bird,  hid  in  the  leafy  trees,  he  could  not 
see.  He  might  have  other  examples  in  his  manu- 
script of  past  years,  but  as  he  has  written  so  much, 
his  memory  fails  to  recall  more.  How  these  an- 
alytic morsels  would  delight  Sainte-Beuve,  were 
he  living,  or  Edgar  Allen  Poe,  w  ho,  along  these 
lines,  might  think  it  worth  while  to  embellish  his 
essay  on  "  The  Philosophy  of  Poetry  "  ! 

Ah,  but  Frances  Aymar  Matthews  could  not 
remember  all  her  own  coinages,  nor  was  there  a 
book  of  hers  in  the  house.  To  coin  words  has 
ever  been  an  impulse  with  her,  when  she  could 
not  think  immediately  of  just  what  she  wanted,  as 
also  to  coin  aphorisms,  mottoes,  headlines,  etc. 
So  my  request  struck  a  friendly  chord. 

The  very  first  word  jNIiss  ^Matthews  can  remem- 
ber inventing  is  the  word  dependable,  when  she 
was  about  fourteen  or  fifteen,  for  its  use  in,  if 
she  remembers  aright,  a  story.  The  New^  York 
Evening  Post  (again,  if  she  is  not  mistaken)  took 
her  to  task  for  both  invention  and  use ;  so 
did  a  number  of  other  papers,  reviewers,  and  lit- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   115 

erary  people  ;  but  she  .still  finds  it  representing 
just  what  she  needed  and  has  often  seen  it  used 
since.  In  writing  of  Jane  Eyre  she  has  said  : 
"  Almost  every  woman  novelist  since  the  appear- 
ance of  that  book  by  '  Currer  Bell '  has  been 
Bronteized  by  its  marvelous  influence." 

She  has  used  the  word  episodic  (as  have  others), 
finding  it  stronger  and  better  than  the  three  or 
four  words  necessary  in  its  stead.  In  her  play, 
"  Aaron  Burr,"  the  hero  says :  "  Even  so,  sir.  It 
is  not  untrue  that  when  a  woman  has  locked  and 
bolted,  even  barred,  the  door  against  the  one 
who  knocks  outside,  she  still  will  hie  her  to  the 
window  to  perceive  if  he  tardies  on  the  steps." 
Tardies  seemed  to  Miss  Matthews  to  express  ex- 
actly the  situation,  which  neither  lingering,  nor 
tarrying,  nor  stopping  conveys.  In  some  essay  of 
hers  is  to  be  found,  "  the  defeminization  of  women 
is  almost  surely  succeeded  by  the  effeminization 
of  men,"  or,  as  she  wrote  it  in  French,  "  Plus  les 
femmes  se  defeminisent,  jylus  les  homines  se  femin- 
issentJ'  This,  I  believe,  crossed  the  Atlantic  and 
has  appeared  in  various  places  in  French  print. 
The  dei'iator  is  a  word  she  coined  to  portray,  in  a 
single  term,  if  possible,  a  certain  type  of  man,  not 
criminal,  sinner,  nor  culprit,  but  yet  one  who  de- 
viated ;  perhaps  not  without  his  attractions,  but 
lacking  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  stability.  The  man 
in  question  was  a  Latin. 

In  her  play,  "Joan  D'Arc,"  Nicholas  I'Oysel- 
eur,  the  villain  of  history  and  play  ])oth,  says  of 
Joan  :   "Aye,  and  she  doth  roijal  it  here  in  camp, 


116  WORD-COINAGE. 

as  'twere  a  court  and  she  the  queen  of  it."  lu 
au  essay  Miss  Matthews  recalls  this  :  "  Innocent'wa 
is  a  cloak  uot  infrequently  employed  by  the  most 
Kusee  woman."  And  in  a  paper  on  Admiral 
Dewey  she  says :  "  Between  sunrise  and  high 
noon  the  man  of  Manila  deprovincialized  the  most 
provincial  country  on  the  globe,"  etc.  I  should 
not  cry,  "  hold,  enough  !  "  to  the  pleasing  caus- 
eries  of  the  author,  but  her  memory  will  not  help 
her  further. 

Professor  L.  H.  Bailey,  who  has  the  chair  of 
Agriculture  at  Cornell,  sent  me  a  list  of  new 
words  which  he  has  made  in  his  various  publica- 
tions.    These  include : 

Cuttacje — the  practice  or  process  of  multiplying 
plants  by  means  of  cuttings,  or  the  state  or  con- 
dition of  being  propagated.  Equivalent  to  the 
French  houturage. 

Graftage — the  process  or  operation  of  grafting 
or  budding,  or  the  state  or  condition  of  being 
grafted  or  budded.  Equivalent  to  the  French 
greffage. 

Layerage — the  operation  or  process  of  making 
a  layer,  or  the  state  or  condition  of  being  layered. 
Equivalent  to  the  French  marcoUage. 

Seedage — the  process  or  operation  of  propagat- 
ing by  seeds  or  spores,  or  the  state  or  condition  of 
being  propagated  by  seeds  or  spores. 

Inter-tillage. — This  term  Professor  Bailey  pro- 
posed in  a  foot-note  on  page  69  of  Roberts'  Fertil- 
ity of  the  Land,  as  follows  :  "  Intercultural  tillage 
is  a  term  proposed  by  Sturtevant  to  designate  till- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    117 

age  between  plants  in  distinction  to  that  which  is 
performed  only  when  the  ground  is  bare  of  plants 
(as  in  sowed  crops).  ...  As  tillage  is  a 
better  word  than  culture  to  designate  the  stirring 
of  the  land,  inter-tillage  has  been  used  in  this 
book  to  designate  tillage  between  the  plants — that 
is,  ordinary  cultivating,  hoeing,  and  the  like." 

Three  new  words  were  proposed  in  his  Survival 
of  the  Unlike,  and  are  defined  as  follows  : 

Cenfrogenesis — a  term  to  designate  the  rotate 
or  peripheral  type  of  form  assumed  by  members 
of  the  plant  creation. 

Dipleurogenesis — a  term  proposed  to  designate 
the  two-sided  or  dimeric  type  of  form  assumed 
by  the  members  of  the  animal  creation. 

Pseud-annual — (that  is  false  annual)  a  herba- 
ceous plant  which  carries  itself  over  winter  (or 
the  inactive  season)  by  means  of  bull:»s,  tubers, 
and  the  like. 

Landscape-horticulture  —  the  operations  and 
manual  appliances  employed  in  embellishing 
grounds — the  industrial  phase  of  landscape-gar- 
dening. 

Other  coinages  from  Bailey's  Survival  of  the 
Unlike  are : 

Communalintensity — an  expression  to  designate 
the  fact  of  the  rapid  spread  of  insects  and  fungi 
consequent  upon  the  greater  number  and  extent 
of  host-plants. 

Cultural  degeneracy — used  to  denote  the  common 
assumption  that  plants  become  weakened  in  con- 
stitution or  virility  bv  cultivation. 


118  WORD-COINAGE. 

Varietal  difference — a  formula  to  express  the 
fact  that  unlike  constitutious  may  be  character- 
istic of  horticultural  varieties. 

Plur-annual — a  plaut  which  is  annual  ouly  be- 
cause it  is  killed  by  the  closing  of  the  season  (as 
by  frost)  ;  in  distinction  to  one  which  dies  at  the 
close  of  the  season  because  of  natural  ripeness  or 
maturity.  This  word  has  been  used  by  French 
writers,  but  was  first  used  in  English,  so  far  as  I 
can  learn,  by  Professor  Bailey. 

I  see  that  "olericulture"  is  in  the  Century  and 
the  Standard  Dictionary.  It  was  made  by  the  late 
Dr.  E.  Louis  Sturtevant.  He  also  made  uuci- 
culture  (nut  culture),  but  I  have  not  been  able 
to  find  out  when  or  where.  "  Bush-fruits  "  might 
be  mentioned.  It  has  been  long  in  use  in  Eng- 
land, but  was  introduced  into  American  writing 
by  Professor  Bailey  in  his  Principlps  of  Fruit 
Growing.  Professor  Card  has  written  a  book  on 
Bush  Fruits,  comprising  small  fruits  excepting 
the  strawberry.  "Stercology"  was  invented  by 
Dr.  ]M.  jVI.  Rodgers,  in  Genesee  Farmer,  August, 
1847,  and  used  in  his  Scientific  Agriculture,  1848. 
It  is  the  science  of  enriching  the  soil.  It  has 
never  been  used  by  any  other  author,  I  believe, 
but  Professor  Bailey  is  tempted  to  take  it  up, 
he  says.  "  Offscape "  was  used  by  landscape- 
gardening  writers  in  England  a  century  ago. 
Professor  Bailey  is  now  using  it  to  designate  that 
part  of  the  landscape  which  lies  beyond  one's  own 
area. 

Ingersoll  Lock  wood,  a  New  York  philologist, 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMKRICAN  AUTHORS.    119 

has  been  for  several  years  collecting  newly  coined 
words,  with  the  intention  of  publishing  a  list 
some  day.  He  has  about  1500,  he  tells  me,  but 
they  are  from  all  languages,  picked  up  here  and 
there.  In  some  cases  he  may  have  the  author. 
Several  are  his  own  coining ;  and  many  were 
coined  at  his  request  by  learned  friends.  His 
scheme  is  as  follows  : 

1.  He  collects  words  that  are  coined  to  piece 
out  our  language,  as  to  preche,  to  state  a  thing 
with  precision. 

2.  He  collects  words  which  serve  to  remedy  a 
detect  in  our  language — e.  g.,  lii>lazy,^  a  disinclina- 
tion to  put  thoughts  into  words. 

3.  He  collects  from  other  languages  words 
which  tend  to  add  strength  to  ours,  sometimes 
taking  them  as  they  stand ;  sometimes  slightly 
changing  the  spelling,  abolishing  the  accents,  and 
pronouncing  the  word  more  Angliorum — e.  g.j 
"lese-majeste"  Tpronounced  lees-majesty);  "tro- 
cha,"  a  line  of  defenses  subdividing  a  country  ; 
"  full-throated,"  with  unhampered  inclinations, 
from  the  French  a  pleine  gorge,  as  "  She  gave 
full-throated  utterance  to  her  thoughts." 

4.  He  builds  useful  words  from  the  Latin 
or  Greek,  as  auto-drome,  a  motor  truck ;  auto- 
tijped,  said  of  a  letter  written  on  a  type-writer 
by  the  sender  himself ;  that  is,  not  dictated ;  logo- 
log,  a  word  made  up  of  several  words,  as  De\dl- 
may-care,  a  never-to-be-forgotten  look,  etc. 

5.  He  deems  a  word  unknown  to  the  language 

1  Found  ill  tlie  dictionaries. 


120  WORD-COINAGE. 

if  not  found  included  in  the  latest  editions  of  the 
Standard  Dictionary.  But  he  has  very  few  new 
w^ords  by  Americans.  To  quote  from  one  of  his 
letters  :  "  Englishmen  are  the  great  word-makers, 
and  good  ones  they  make,  too.  They  surge  up 
against  a  blank  wall  in  the  language  and  forth- 
with build  a  ladder  to  clamber  over.  You  can't 
suppress  them.  They  are  thinkers  ;  we — no  ! 
We  are  plunged  into  a  slough  of  vanity  thick- 
ened with  love  of  lucre.  Your  American  authors, 
for  the  most  part,  are  not  authors,  but  merely 
relationists  (see  p.  157).  Any  fool  can  write  a 
story,  but  put  thought  into  it — Jiic  labor,  hoc 
opus  esty 

It  may  be  inferred  from  this  that  Ingersoll 
Lockwood  is  a  man  of  robust  opinions,  and  I  may 
add  that  he  is  quite  as  distinguished  and  Titanic 
in  mind  as  in  person.  His  brother.  Colonel 
Henry  C.  Lockwood,  who  received  the  surrender 
of  Fort  Fisher,  and  who,  up  to  the  time  of  his 
illness,  a  few  years  ago,  was  a  prominent  member 
of  the  New  York  bar,  has  written  much,  chiefly 
on  politics  and  history.  He  doubts  if  he  ever 
coined  any  words  in  his  two  principal  works. 
In  The  Abolition  of  the  Presidency  he  did  incor- 
porate coined  words  in  use  with  us.  For  example, 
the  word  claneocracy,  and  he  was  rapped  over  the 
knuckles  by  the  London  Spectator  for  using  so 
mongrel  an  expression — half  English,  half  Greek. 
In  his  Constitutional  History  of  France  he  used 
"disgruntled"  and  "  plebisitary,"  then  in  no  dic- 
tionary  that    he   knew    of      His    adjective    for 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   121 

plebiscite  he  had  uever  heard.     It  may  be  found 
in  dictionaries  of  more  recent  date. 

In  writing  his  France,  Colonel  Lockwood  had 
several  disputes  about  words  with  his  publisher. 
It  was  insisted  that  he  should  write  plebiscit,  or 
plebisitum,  instead  of  plebiscite,  because  the  last 
could  not  be  found  in  the  English  dictionaries. 
He  prevailed  after  a  struggle.  Then  came  the 
same  contest  over  a  long  list  of  words  which  he 
wanted  to  print  \nthout  italics,  as  if  they  were 
English  words.  Some  of  them,  at  least,  appear 
now  in  the  public  press  as  he  has  them  in  his 
France — viz.  : 

Proletariat.  Faubourg.  Cure. 

Dossier.  Quartier.  Intendant. 

Bourgeoisie.  Octroi.  vSalon. 

Petite  Noblesse.  Canton.  Bordereau. 

Commune.  Coulisse-ier. 

All  these  words  had  a  technical  meaning,  and 
could  be  only  clumsily  translated.  Colonel  Lock- 
wood  writes  :  "  It  may  not  be  within  the  scope 
of  your  inquiry,  but  you  would  be  surprised 
possibly  at  the  number  of  English  words  which 
have  recently  passed  into  French.  The  Germans 
are  trying  to  force  out  French  words  from  their 
language.  Macmillan's  for  December  (1898) 
has  an  article  entitled,  '  The  Madness  of  ]Mr. 
Kipling.'  It  is  claimed  that  he  has  bred  a  kind 
of  collector  mania,  a  craving  for  strange  ^  words. 

^Sajs  Brander  Matthews:  "Mr.  Kipling's  earliest 
tales  are  some  of  them  almost  incomprehensible  to  readers 


122  WORD'COINAGE. 

If  he  discovers  a  new  terra — a  technical  terra  for 
choice — he  is  happy  as  any  entomologist  with  a 
new  beetle  and  as  eager  to  exploit  it.  This 
pedantry  of  technical  terras  seeras  to  grow  on  him, 
and  the  craze  for  symbolism." 

I  wrote  to  Archibald  Lampman,  the  Canadian 
poet,  not  knowing  of  his  death,  which  had  occurred 
a  few  days  before.  Duncan  Campbell  Scott,  him- 
self a  distinguished  poet  and  the  editor  of  Lami> 
man's  collected  works,  kindly  answered  the  letter, 
and  his  reply  is  in  its  way  valuable  testimony. 
Mr.  Scott  writes :  "  Mr.  Lampman  was  careful 
in  his  use  of  language,  and,  as  I  have  said,  I 
cannot  recall  any  inventions  of  his.  ...  I 
might  draw  your  attention  to  the  word  clarid, 
w^hich  appears  in  one  of  ray  own  poems — mean- 
ing clear,  and  formed  in  the  same  way  as  fervid. 
I  do  not  recall  any  others  now,  but  I  have  used  a 
good  many  words  partially  obsolete  which  are  full 
of  color  and  which  are  highly  expressive.  A  few 
might  be  mentioned :  sowage,  pomace,  braird, 
quern,  undern,  crescive,  antres,  aura,  alula.'' 

Though  some  of  her  English  friends  have  ob- 
jected to  her  use  of  certain  words  (in  things  she 
has  written)  as  not  being  in  the  dictionary,  Eliza- 
beth Robins  has  never  failed  to  lay  the  blame  on 
the  dictionary  and  to  insist  that  the  words  were 
"good  American."  It  is  true,  her  countrymen 
may  not  uphold  her  here,  but  in  that  case  it  is  to 
them  I  would  have  to  apply. 

unacquainted  with  the  vocabulary  of  the  competition 
wallah." 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    123 

Frederick  Jesiip  Stirasou  remembers  no  word 
of  his  own  invemiou  in  his  published  works, 
though  there  may  be  some.  He  used  the  word 
"savour"  in  the  sense  of  an  active  verb,  "to 
taste  slowly  and  with  gusto,"  which  was  criticized 
by  Professor  Hill,  of  Harvard,  but  is  found  in 
that  sense  in  the  larger  dictionaries.  There  are 
also  many  archaic  words  at  the  beginning  of 
Kirig  Xoanett,  and  possibly  all  through  that 
book,  belongiug  to  natural  objects,  some  of  which 
have  passed  out  of  use  except  locally,  and  some  of 
which  were  always  local  to  Devoushire,  Virginia, 
or  Massachusetts. 

Professor  George  Trumbull  Ladd  has  never 
indulged  himself  much  in  attempts  at  making 
new  vrords.  He  thinks,  however,  that  he  was  the 
first  to  use  the  word  sermonetfe  (twenty  or  more 
vears  ago)  ;  and  he  was  among  the  first  to  use 
the  words  {deate  and  ideatia  and  the  adjective 
"  affective "  as  the  correlate  of  intellectual  and 
voluntary,  for  the  total  feeling  aspect  of  con- 
sciousness. 

The  examples  of  Ernest  Thompson  Seton's  ver- 
bal experiments  thus  far  are  as  follows  : 

"I  took  pleasure  in  the  shattermeiii  of  that 
theoiy,  and  flew  in  and  out  among  the  ticic/r/enj'' — 
that  is,  corral  of  shrubberv. 

"  r/?n7(fH/ of  interest  "—from  The  Trail  of  the 
Sandhill  Stag. 

"  He  laid  the  rifle  down  reviihedy 

"  Hunter-bride.''' 

Robert  Burns  Wilson  does  not  think  he   has 


124 


WORD-COINAGE. 


beeu  much  of  a  word-coiner,  though  sometimes 
tempted  in  that  direction.  He  used  the  word  lui- 
impressioned  in  "  The  Shadows  of  the  Trees  " — 
title  poem  in  his  latest  volume  of  verse ;  also  the 
word  miirth,  in  the  sense  of  a  rich  overgrowth,  is 
perhaps  unusual.  It  occurs  in  a  poem,  "  On  San 
Juan  Hill,"  published  in  the  ^ew  York  Sidi  : 

"The  tufted  murth  of  the  patient  earth 
And  the  mystery  of  the  trees." 

He  recalls  nothing  more,  unless  it  be  the  word 
brit,  which  he  has  used  in  an  unpublished 
poem  : 

"  Far  from  the  brit  and  jungles  of  the  world  " — 


meaning  grating  harshness.  The  word  is  in  the 
dictionaries  as  the  name  of  a  small  fish,  but  fishes 
suffer  from  all  sorts  of  names  that  may,  or  may 
not,  mean  something. 

A  few  days  after  ]Mark  Twain's  return  from  a 
long  absence  abroad  (October,  1900)  he  wrote  me 
that  he  was  too  rushed  to  make  a  very  coherent 
reply  to  my  inquiries.  So  far  as  he  could  re- 
member then  he  has  coined  no  words  that  have 
achieved  the  distinction  of  incorporation  into  the 
English  language.  He  thinks  he  may  have 
given  currency  to  some  that  were  already  in  use, 
particularly  in  the  Western  mines,  liut  of  this  he 
is  not  sure. 

I  think  it  is  safe  to  say  that  ^lark  Twain  has 
not  only  popularized  words  and  phrases  which 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  125 

might  have  died  but  for  his  tonic  treatment  of 
them,  but  has  coined  others  which  have  become 
familiar,  at  least  in  our  vernacular.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  Bret  Harte.  The  one  favorite  word 
with  him  seems  to  me  to  be  the  old  stand-by  "  per- 
functory." This  he  uses  on  high  days  and  holi- 
days, but  it  is,  to  be  sure,  good  English,  with  an 
ancient  enough  ancestry.  The  "  newcomers  "  he 
immortalizes  in  the  direct  discourse  of  his 
characters. 


CHAPTER  VIIL 

NEOLOGISMS. — (  Continued.) 

Mr.  C.  W.  Ernst  says  he  has  been  thought, 
erroueously,  to  have  introduced  the  word  "in- 
tern," meaning  to  confine,  especially  a  prisoner. 
When  he  used  the  word  in  1877  it  was  not  new, 
as  the  Oxford  Dictionary  shows.  Mr.  Ernst 
thinks  words  are  not  apt  to  be  coined  save  when 
fitted  or  adapted  to  a  new  contrivance,  thing, 
notion.  Even  the  term  elevator,  called  lift  in 
England,  came  after  we  had  the  thing,  and  the 
first  passenger  elevator  was  that  in  the  American 
House,  Boston,  1866. 

Mr.  Ernst  is  by  no  means  wrong  in  thinking 
that  we  have  hardly  made  a  beginning  in  the 
study  of  the  language  we  speak.  Yet  that  lan- 
guage shows  better  what  we  are  than  do  all  our 
historians  combined.  "  Yesterday,"  writes  ]\Ir. 
Ernst,  "  I  wasted  time  in  running  down  two 
words :  '  Wild-cat '  banking,  occasioned  by  a 
Michigan  statute,  and  used  in  the  United  States 
Senate  by  Benton  in  1838  ;  bubble  is  the  fashion- 
able slang  for  riding  in  an  automobile.  I  marvel 
that  people  do  not  gather  the  speech  of  the  multi- 
tude. I  am  amazed  that  no  American  ever  pro- 
duced a  dictionary  of  place  names." 
126 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVINIt  AMKRICAN  AUTHORS.  127 

As  might  have  been  expected,  Boston,  one  of 
the  cradles  of  American  culture,  "  the  Hub  of  the 
universe,"  "  the  modern  Athens,"  and  so  on,  has 
criven  to  the  world  numerous  words.  Mr.  Ernst 
has  made  an  exhaustive  list  of  them.  On  the 
subject  of  "  Words  Coined  in  Boston "  he  read 
two  papers  before  the  Bostonian  Societv,  one  in 
May,  1896,  the  other  in  May,  1899.  'To  give 
the  gist  of  his  interesting  discoveries  may  prove 
a  pardonable  digression.  From  these  addresses 
I  learn  that  the  earliest  printed  instance  of  the 
term  "selectmen"  probablv  occurs  in  the  Boston 
Records  of  March  4  and  28,  1642. 

This  author  has  it  that  the  Tudor  period  of 
Boston  English  was  Boston's  golden  age  in  every- 
thing ;  while  the  best  coinages  of  the  eighteenth 
century  refer  to  traffic,  finance,  and  politics.  He 
finds  the  word  coaster  to  be  apparently  the  ear- 
liest Americanism.  In  state  documents  of  1633 
it  is  used  "in  the  sense  of  idler,  grouping  the 
coaster  with  tobacco-takers  and  fowlers.  The 
word  now  denotes  sliding  down-hill,  and  is  used 
by  all  bicycle  riders." 

"  Sleigh,"  plainly  due  to  Dutch  influence,  was 
in  use  a  hundred  years  ago,  but  whether  it  got 
into  the  American  vocabulary  by  way  of  Ply- 
mouth or  N^ew  York  has  not  been  clearly  deter- 
mined. The  term  is  said  to  occur  in  a  New  York 
law  of  1699,  while  Mr.  Ernst's  earliest  citations 
are  Sewell  in  1703,  and  Madame  Knisfht  in 
1704. 

The  word  "rum,"  first  used  in  the  Massachu- 


128  WORD-COINAGE. 

setts  Records  of  May  6,  1657,  has  become  uni- 
versal. It  may  be  the  old  gypsy  word,  brought 
to  Boston  ''  by  the  university  men,  and  popularly 
applied  to  the  'strong  water'  the  Boston  men 
made  of  West  India  material,  the  home  supply 
of  corn  being  limited.  A  true  Boston  word,  now 
a  good  Americanism,  is  '  lumber.'  " 

That  the  real-estate  term  ''lot"  originated  in 
Boston  is  not  clear,  but  the  Town  Records  of  1636 
show  that  "  lot "  is  an  abbreviation  of  allotment. 
The  word  "  schooner "  was  born  in  Gloucester, 
but  Boston  gave  "packet"  its  American  mean- 
ing. The  fact  that  Boston  always  excelled  in 
leather  and  leather  workers  may  be  the  reason, 
says  j\Ir.  Ernst,  why  Boston  forestalled  other  towns 
in  applying  the  word  "harness"  to  almost  any 
kind  of  horse  tackling.  "Phaeton"  also  looks 
like  a  Boston  coinage.  It  appeared  in  the  Boston 
Gazette  of  May  26,  1760.  The  Boston  word 
"express,"  originally  local,  and  denoting  a  sys- 
tematic package  service,  has  become  a  true 
Americanism.  The  term  came  up  in  1840  ;  the 
service  itself,  about  a  century  ago. 

Boston  invented  paper  money  in  1690,  and 
fifty  years  later  William  Douglass  was  writing 
about  "depreciating"  and  "fluctuating"  values 
and  "  promoters  "  of  bubbles.  "  The  popular 
word  for  paper  money  was  *  currency,'  duly  en- 
tered as  an  American  coinage  in  Johnson's  Dic- 
tionary of  1775,  and  unduly  neglected  by  our 
own  lexicographers."  The  financial  agitation  of 
Boston  also  brought  forth  the  term  caucus,  de- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  129 

rived  from  calkers.  Adopted  as  a  political  word 
about  1760,  it  has  become  a  part  of  the  English 
lauguaofe  wherever  spoken.  A  few  years  later 
the  word  electioneering  was  common,  but  it  may 
have  come  from  England.  Obviously  American  is 
"  unconstitutional,"  meaning  illegal  or  not  binding. 
"It  occurs,  with  unconstitutionality,  in  a  report 
submitted  to  the  Boston  Town  Meeting  on  De- 
cember 27,  1782,  but  may  be  found  earlier." 
Another  Boston  coinage  is  immigrant,  and  its 
story  is  told  in  the  preface  to  Jeremy  Belknap's 
History  of  Xeic  Hampshire,  vol.  iii.,  dated  April 
23,  1792.  "It  was  an  immigrant,"  says  Ernst, 
"the  identical  Jean  Baptiste  Julien  that  did  not 
invent  julienne  soup,  who  introduced  here  the 
word  'restorator,'  on  July  12,  1793,  which  re- 
mains as  a  sporadic  folk-word,  while  society  pat- 
ronizes restaurants." 

Advice  and  consent,  we  are  told,  is  much  more 
than  a  phrase  ;  for  it  denotes  a  great  political 
principle,  reinforcing  the  new  meaning  given  to 
the  word  "  commonwealth  "  in  America,  and  run- 
ning like  a  golden  thread  through  our  national 
history.  It  is  found  in  the  Boston  Town  Kecords 
as  early  as  1636,  and  "the  men  with  whom  we 
associate  the  delightful  and  telling  phrase  are 
John  Adams,  Increase  blather,  and  the  great 
John  Winthrop."  In  Winthrop's  journal,  No- 
vember 28,  1635,  the  word  boss  was  used  in  the 
following  way  :  "  Here  arrived  a  small  Norsey 
(North  Sea)  bark,  of  twenty-five  tons,  sent  by  the 
Lords  Say,  etc.,  with  one  Gardner,  an  expert  en- 


130  WORD-COINAGE. 

giueer  or  work  boss,  and  provisions  of  all  sorts,  to 
begin  a  fort  at  the  mouth  of  the  Connecticut." 
This  word  comes  from  the  Dutch,  and  Winthrop 
probably  had  heard  it  from  some  of  his  Puritan 
brethren  who  had  lived  in  Holland.  Americans 
now  have  a  proper  horror  of  it  in  its  political 
sense. 

"  Help,  meaning  household  or  outside  assistance 
hired  in  all  sorts  of  ways,  occurs  as  early  as 
1645  in  the  Massachusetts  Records.  The  term 
was  needed  to  discriminate  between  mere  servants, 
who  were  not  free,  and  the  free  person  who  sold 
time  or  talent  for  a  consideration.  .  .  .  The 
term  occurs  in  the  Town  Records  of  1747,  and  is 
apt  to  be  misunderstood  until  one  knows  the  pre- 
cise meaning  of  service  and  apprentice  prior  to  the 
Revolution.  Servant  was  synonymous  with  slave  ; 
help  meant  a  person  with  full  civil  and  social 
rights." 

Boston  also  gave  to  mankind  "  store,"  and  by 
1753  the  term  had  passed  into  the  statutes,  with 
a  meaning  distinct  from  "shop."  In  1751  the 
Boston  Evening  Post  advertised  "a  large  assort- 
ment of  brass  kettles."  Ten  years  prior  the  terra 
had  been  sortment.  A  prototype  of  the  much 
talked  about  New  York  commuter  of  to-day  lived 
in  Boston  one  hundred  years  ago.  When  turn- 
pikes became  popular  in  Massachusetts,  it  was 
customary  to  commute  tolls,  and  the  modern  com- 
mutation ticket  is  merely  a  modified  survival  of 
•stage-coach  days.  The  farm  wagon  originated  in 
Pennsylvania  ;  so  did  the  prairie  schooner.     (Per- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  131 

haps  the  reader  is  familiar  with  Thomas  Bu- 
chanan Read's  poem,  "  The  Waggoner  of  the 
AUeghauies.") 

The  word  "factory,"  denoting  an  establishment 
for  the  wholesale  manufacture  of  goods,  was  in 
use  a  number  of  years  before  the  outbreak  of  the 
Revolution.  "  Democrat,  as  an  American  party 
name,  did  not  originate  in  Boston.  It  was  started 
4  July,  1793,  at  Philadelphia,  by  Citizen  Genet, 
and  was  for  years  a  term  of  reproach.  Jefferson 
disliked  it.  Yet  the  name  stuck,  and  Boston  led 
in  accepting  it.  We  had  a  newspaper  called 
the  Democrat,  which  first  appeared  4  January, 
1804." 

Ernst  ventures  to  hold  that  tannery  and  bind- 
ery are  Boston  coinages.  "Bindery  appears  to  be 
due  to  Isaiah  Thomas,  who  used  it  in  1810.  He 
would  be  apt  to  coin  the  term,  which  has  gone 
hence,  not  only  to  England,  but  to  Germany  as 
well.  Sugary  is  a  good  Americanism  (place  for 
boiling  maple-sugar),  and  we  might  coin  printery, 
bookery,  on  the  precedent  of  butchery,  fishery, 
tannery,  hatchery,  snugoferv,  and  the  London 
Yankery." 

To  the  best  of  Ernst's  knowledge  and  belief  the 
following  are  Boston  words :  Real  estate  as  a 
business  term  (it  is  a  law  term  in  England)  ; 
team,  meaning  horse  and  wagon ;  teamster ; 
"  corder,  about  1655,  meaning  an  ofhcer  that 
measured  wood  for  fuel,  and  long  extinct ;  dock- 
age, 1673,  recalling  the  fact,  generally  forgotten, 
that  Boston  had  a  dock  system  before  London  "  ; 


132  WORD-COINAGE. 

fireward,  1711,  still  in  use,  and  denoting  "the 
fire  police  rather  than  the  firemen  who  work  the 
engines;  blanks,  in  the  sense  of  blank  forms" 
(1724)  ;  transients,  said  of  persons  accommodated 
in  hotels  (about  1709);  block,  "  denoting  a  group 
of  houses  or  stores,"  became  common  at  the  be- 
ginning of  the  nineteenth  century  ;  limbs,  applied 
to  both  legs  and  arms,  a  term  well  chosen  to  de- 
note four  extremities  with  one  word  (1738) ; 
goodies,  used  by  Mrs.  Mecom  in  a  letter  (1766)  ; 
dressmaker,  in  1810  or  earlier,  and  abutter,  "a 
true  Boston  term,  familiar  to  real-estate  dealers. 
In  assessing  taxes  Boston  officials 
always  used  their  'will  and  doom,'  and  in  due 
course  coined  the  verb,  which  is  still  in  use. 
Hence  the  dooming-board.  The  word  doom  is 
sometimes  associated  with  gloom,  but  is  simply  a 
variation  of  the  word  deem,  and  means  opinion 
or  judgment.  AVhen  taxable  property  is  not  re- 
ported to  the  assessors,  they  exercise  their  doom 
or  judgment." 

It  is  claimed  that  Mr.  Louis  Prang,  an  honored 
Bostonian,  coined  the  word  chromo  in  1864. 
Another  distinctly  Boston  gift  to  our  vernacular 
is  the  telephone  call,  hello,  which  came  in  1878, 
and  has  gone  all  over  the  world.  The  late  C.  E. 
Pratt,  member  of  the  Common  Council  of  Boston, 
in  1879,  proposed  bicycler,  objecting  to  the  Eng- 
lish bicyclist,  which  he  put  alongside  of  walkist, 
etc.  "  The  term  was  immediately  accepted,  and 
is  interesting  for  the  reason  that  its  origin  is  a 
matter  of  record." 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    133 

And,  finally,  there  is  Boston  brown  bread. 
Here  Ernst  gets  really  eloquent.  He  exclaims  : 
"  I  know  very  well  what  brown  bread  in  England 
meant.  Shakespeare  knew  brown  bread  ;  he  did 
not  know  our  brown  bread."  It  appears  that 
permission  was  granted  Nathaniel  Thwing — he 
had  been  at  Louisberg  and  was  familiarly  called 
]\Xajor — "to  sell  a  six-j^enny  loaf  of  his  brown 
bread,  weighing  eleven  ounces,  provided  it  did 
not  contain  exceeding  'one-fifth  part  Indian 
meal.'  "  This  was  probably  in  January,  1747. 
Boston  brown  bread  originated  in  his  bakery, 
which  was  in  or  near  Post  Office  Square.  The 
standard  was  changed  in  1764,  and  the  mixture 
was  allowed  to  contain  not  exceeding  50  per  cent, 
of  Indian  meal.  Our  amiable  author  remarks  : 
''It  is  safe  to  keep  January  — ,  1747,  as  the  birth- 
day of  Boston  brown  bread,  and  to  believe  that 
we  added  so  much  to  our  national  diet  and  dic- 
tionary." 

Another  beloved  comestible,  Boston  baked 
beans,  is  not  mentioned  l^y  the  authority  I  have 
quoted  so  profusely.  But  the  New  York  Sun, 
one  of  the  most  flourishing  of  our  American  word- 
mints,  in  a  funny  leading  article  on  "  The  Science 
of  Beans,"  has  provided  some  new  nomenclature 
for  them.  Thus :  "  A  cyamologist  or  cyamologer 
is  a  man  versed  in  cyamology,  which  is  the  science 
of  beans.  Take  one  Greek  bean,  kyamos,  and  the 
Greek  Jogia,  a  speaking,  and  you  have  cyamology, 
a  speaking  concerning  beans.  Take  cyamology 
and   graft    on   the    '  ist '  or  '  er  '   to  express  the 


134  WORD-COINAGE. 

agent,  and  you  have  cyamologist  or  cyaraologer. 
Cyamology  is  a  member  of  the  okl  familiar 
'logia'  or  'logy'  clan,  and  denotes  a  justly  ven- 
erated branch  of  science."  After  quoting  imagin- 
ary authorities  for  the  use  of  these,  the  "  editor- 
ial "  mentions  cyamomi/stical  and  cyamomy sties  as 
rare  (they  are,  rather)  and  adds  this  facetious 
trio: 

Cyamophilist — "  fond  of  beans  ;  a  lover  of 
beans." 

Cyamophagist — "  a  bean  eater,  a  native  of  Bos- 
ton, U.  S.  A." 

Cyamophagy—'^  the  eating  of  beans." 

I  am  not  sure  that  many  of  the  suggestions  in 
this  book  have  not  more  psychologic  than  philo- 
logic  value.  Certain  it  is  that  a  marvelous  ad- 
vance will  be  made  during  this  century  in  the 
study  of  psychology  in  all  its  relations.  On  this 
point  Professor  Elmer  Gates  has  contributed  a 
memorable  opinion : 

"  Men  trained  in  the  art  of  more  skilfully  using 
or  utilizing  the  mental  functions  will,  in  at  least 
one  institution  already  founded,  devote  their  lives 
to  scientific  research  in  such  a  way  as  to  achieve 
a  greater  number  of  discoveries  than  would  be 
possible  to  minds  that  are  not  thus  psychologically 
trained.  It  is  the  mind  that  must  make  all  dis- 
coveries and  inventions,  and  more  and  moi'e,  as 
the  century  grows  older,  will  investigators  be  spe- 
cially trained  in  the  art  of  ap})lying  the  mental 
processes  to  the  development  of  special  sciences 
and   arts.     Hitherto  the  direct    training    of  the 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   135 

miud  fiictor  of  making  discoveries  has  been  al- 
most totally  neglected  ;  investigators  have  gone 
on  blindly  and  haphazardly,  violating  almost 
every  environmental,  bodily,  and  psychologic  con- 
dition of  success.  Hereafter  these  conditions  will 
be  scientifically  regulated,  and  men  who  have 
devoted  years  to  the  attainment  of  special  kinds 
of  intellectual,  emotional,  and  conative  skill  will 
carry  on  systematic  lines  of  investigation  for  the 
sake  of  ascertaining  the  truth.  This  factor  is 
applicable,  of  course,  not  only  to  electricity,  but 
to  all  sciences  ;  nevertheless  electricity  is  the  first 
scientific  department  organized  on  this  plan. 
Mentators  who  have  learned  how  to  carry  on  the 
intellective  processes  of  imaging,  conceptuating, 
idealizing,  thinking,  reasoning,  and  introspecting 
with  greater  ease,  accuracy,  and  at  a  greatly  aug- 
mented speed,  and  who  have  at  their  command 
all  the  proved  data  of  a  science  and  all  needed 
experimental  facilities,  will  be  able  to  make 
more  numerous  discoveries  and  inventions  than 
otherwise." 

Many  people  are  becoming  deeply  absorbed  in 
mental  and  psychical  science,  and  for  this  reason 
I  give  the  terms  invented  and  proposed  by  that 
remarkable  English  investigator,  the  late  F.  W. 
H.  Myers,  one  of  the  founders  and  perhaps  the 
strongest  pillar  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Re- 
search. 

In  1882  Mr.  Myers  first  suggested  the  terms 
telepathy  and  fehesthesia,  and  it  has  become  pos- 
sible  to    discriminate   between   these  two    words 


136  WORD-COINAGE. 

somewhat  more  sharply  now  than  formerly. 
"  Telepathy  may  still  be  defined  as  '  the  communi- 
cation of  impressions  of  any  kind  from  one  mind 
to  another,  independently  of  the  recognized  channels 
of  sense.'  The  distance  between  agent  and  percip- 
ient which  the  derivation  of  the  word  '  feeling  at 
a  distance'  implies  need,  in  fact,  only  be  such 
that  no  known  operation  of  the  senses  can  bridge 
it.  Telepathy  may  thus  exist  between  two  men 
in  the  same  room  as  truly  as  between  one  man  in 
England  and  another  in  Australia,  or  between  one 
still  livins:  on  earth  and  another  man  long  since 
departed.  Telsesthesia — perception  at  a  distance — 
may  conveniently  be  interpreted  in  a  similar  way, 
as  implying  any  direct  sensation  or  perception  of 
objects  or  conditions  independently  of  the  recog- 
nized channels  of  sense,  and  also  under  such  circum- 
stances that  no  known  mind  external  to  the  per- 
cipient's can  be  suggested  as  the  source  of  the 
knowledge  thus  gained." 

"  Telergy — a  name  for  a  hypothetical  force  or 
mode  of  action,  concerned  with  the  conveyance 
of  telepathic  impressions,  and  perhaps  with  other 
supernormal  operation. 

^^Supernormal — of  a  faculty  or  phenomenon 
which  goes  beyond  the  level  of  ordinary  exper- 
ience, in  the  direction  of  evolution,  or  as  pertain- 
ing to  a  transcendental  world.  The  word  super- 
natural is  open  to  grave  objections  ;  it  assumes 
that  there  is  something  outside  nature,  and  it 
has  become  associated  with  arbitrary  interference 
with  law.     Now,  there  is    no  reason   to  suppose 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    137 

that  the  psychical  phenomena  with  which  we  deal 
are  less  a  part  of  nature  or  less  subject  to  fixed 
and  definite  law  than  any  other  phenomena. 
Some  of  them  appear  to  indicate  a  higher  evolu- 
tionary level  than  the  mass  of  men  have  vet 
attained,  and  some  of  them  appear  to  be  governed 
by  laws  of  such  a  kind  that  they  may  hold  good 
in  a  transcendental  world  as  in  the  world  of  sense. 
In  either  case  they  are  al:)0ve  the  norm  of  man 
rather  than  outside  his  nature. 

"  Cosmopathic — open  to  the  access  of  super- 
normal knowledge  or  emotion,  apparently  from 
the  transcendental  world,  but  whose  precise  source 
we  have  no  means  of  defining. 

" Dextro-cerehral  (opposed  to  sinistro-cerebral, 
also  a  coinage  of  ]Mr.  Myers') — of  left-handed 
persons,  as  employing  preferentially  the  right 
hemisphere  of  the  brain. 

"  Enteiicephalic — On  the  analogy  of  entoptic  ; 
of  sensations,  etc.,  which  have  their  origin  within 
the  brain,  not  in  the  external  world. 

^'  Panmnesia — would  imply  a  potential  recollec- 
tion of  all  impressions. 

"  Hi/perpromefJua — Supernormal  power  of  fore- 
sight ;  attributed  to  the  subliminal  self  as  a  hy- 
pothesis by  which  to  explain  premonitions  without 
assuming  either  that  the  future  scene  is  shown  to 
the  percipient  by  any  mind  external  to  his  own, 
or  that  circumstances  which  we  regard  as  future 
are  in  any  sense  already  existent." 

To  illusions  accompanying  the  departure  of 
sleep,  as  when  a  dream-figure  persists  for  a  few 


138  WORD-COINAGE. 

moments  into  waking  life,  he  has  given  the  name 
hypnopompic. 

"■  Metliedic — Of  communications  between  one 
stratum  of  man's  intelligence  and  another;  as 
when  he  writes  messages  whose  origin  is  in  his 
own  subliminal  self.  Some  word  is  needed  to  ex- 
press this  novel  conception  ;  and  Plato's  use  of 
tj.zOz^t?,  participation  (Farm.  132  D),  suggests 
'  methectic '  as  the  most  appropriate  term  of  Greek 
origin. 

"  Preversion — a  tendency  to  characteristics  as- 
sumed to  lie  at  a  further  point  of  the  evolutionary 
progress  of  a  species  than  has  yet  been  reached  ; 
opposed  to  reversion. 

"  Promnesia — The  paradoxical  sensation  of 
recollecting  a  scene  which  is  only  now  occurring 
for  the  first  time  ;  the  sense  of  the  dejdru.  The 
term  jmramnesia,  which  is  sometimes  given  to  this 
sensation,  should,  I  think,  cover  all  forms  of 
erroneous  memory,  and  cannot  without  confusion 
be  used  to  express  specifically  this  one  anomalous 
sensation. 

"  Betrocoguitiou — knowledge  of  the  past,  super- 
normally  acquired." 

Finally  he  suggested  the  word  ])an(v-'^thesia,  "to 
express  the  undiflTerentiated  sensory  capacity  of 
the  supposed  primal  germ." 

In  his  glossary  ]Mr.  ]Myers  explains  some  words 
and  phrases  in  themselves  not  new,  but  used  in 
the  studies  of  the  society  with  some  special  signifi- 
cance. They  are  too  numerous,  however,  even  to 
summarize  here. 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   139 

Dr.  James  Braid,  a  Scotchman  by  birth,  but 
for  many  years  a  surgeon  in  Manchester,  England, 
was  the^  rediscoverer  of  the  subjective  origin  of 
hvpnotic  phenomena,  and  invented  a  terminology 
which  is  closely  followed,  with  two  or  three  excep- 
tions, at  the  present  day.  Among  these  terms 
are : 

Neurypnology,  the  rationale  or  doctrine  of  ner- 
vous sleep. 

Neuro-hypnotism,  or  nervous  sleep,  a  peculiar 
condition  of  the  nervous  system  produced  by  arti- 
ficial contrivance. 

Then,  suppressing  the  prefix  "  neuro,"  for  the 
sake  of  brevity,  Dr.  Braid  evolved  such  terms  as 
hypnotic,  hypnotize,  hypnotism,  dehypnotize,  etc., 
which  have  superseded  largely  in  popular  and 
almost  wholly  in  scientific  usage  the  terms  "mes- 
meric sleep "  and  "  mesmerism,"  originated  by 
Friedrich  Anton  Mesmer, 

Other  terms,  like  mono-ideology,  monoideism, 
psycho-physiology,  etc.,  invented  by  Dr.  Braid, 
have  not  fared  so  well.  Indeed,  his  enterprise  in 
this  direction  was  prejudicial  to  his  career.  Ex- 
cept by  a  curious  and  withal  skeptical  public, 
nearly  all  his  theories  were  ignored  during  his 
lifetime,  his  death  occurring  in  1860 ;  but  his 
terms — that  is  to  say,  some  of  them — were  gradu- 
ally adopted  and  his  researches  recognized,  though 
in  no  such  degree  as  they  deserve  to  be  or  will  be 
some  day. 

To  return  to  our  less  abstruse  American 
authors  :    Octave  Thanet,  in  a  short  story,  uses  the 


140  WORD-COINAGE. 

colloquial  term  2:)ernicketty,  which  I  take  to  mean 
a  fussy  kind  of  worrimeut. 

The  mountain  of  Frederick  Remington's  mind 
labored  and  brought  forth  the  compound  "  bull- 
dogged^' — of  a  man's  hands  gripping  a  carbine 
barrel. 

Sarah  Guernsey  Bradley's  clever  pen  is  re- 
sponsible for  this  :  "  the  weii'dities  of  this  naughty 
world." 

Professor  Burton  makes  laud  a  noun, — *'  worthy 
of  laud," — as  it  was  used  in  Elizabethan  times, 
and  I  am  glad  to  see  it  given  this  twist  again. 

But  I  despair  of  being  able  to  mention  all  the 
"fresh  arrivals."  They  are  coming  in  on  new 
trains  of  thought  almost  daily.  I  doubt  not  that 
while  this  tome  is  in  press  a  dozen  or  more  new 
terms  will  be  hatched  which  I  shall  wish  were  in- 
cluded here. 


J 


CHAPTER   LX. 

NEOLOGISMS. — {Continued.) 

Professor  Thomas  J.  Allen  advocates  the 
adoption  of  such  a  means  of  improving  our  lan- 
guage as  will  give  future  generations  the  benefit 
of  the  united  efforts  of  the  best  living  authorities 
on  language,  and  he  would  gladly  support  any 
movement  that  might  lead  toward  that  end.  If 
the  expression  be  allowed,  he  favors  respectalile 
counterfeiting,  in  the  hope  that  it  may  lead  to  the 
establishment  of  a  mint.  But  he  is  not  a  counter- 
feiter. He  knows  that  we  need  more  word-cur- 
rency, but  he  does  not  wish  to  assume  the  respon- 
sibility of  coining.  He  is  averse  to  "free  and 
unlimited  coinage."  He  believes  in  a  siugle 
standard — constituted  authority. 

Edward  Payson  Jackson  made  a  rather  neat 
word  in  Filipina,  to  designate  a  Filipino  woman. 

Dr.  Van  Dyke,  in  Fisherman's  Luck,  devotes  a 
light  and  airy  chapter  to  the  subject  of  Talka- 
bilitij. 

Professor  John  Duncan  Quackenbos,  in  Hypno- 
tism in  Mental  and  Moral  Culture,  introduces  a 
fearsome  word  denoting  a  parlous  thing.  It  is 
opsomania,  which,  alas  !  works  its  ravages  among 

141 


142  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  young  and  fair.  It  gives  tiiem  "  indigestion, 
mental  indolence,  chronic  gastric  catarrh,  and, 
most  to  be  deplored,  a  fetid  breath,  which  renders 
the  possessor  positively  odious."  "  The  breath 
of  a  healthy  girl  of  twenty,"  moralizes  Professor 
Quackenbos,  "  should  be  pure  and  sweet  as  a  May 
breeze,"  but  opsomania  "  transforms  it  into  a 
nauseous  blast."  In  his  review  of  the  book 
William  S.  Walsh  comments  in  these  words  on 
this  fashionable  malady  :  "  It  is  the  commonest 
of  all  complaints  among  the  girls  of  the  period. 
The  girls  themselves  call  it  a  sweet  tooth,  or, 
rather,  a  sweet  tooth  is  that  form  of  the  complaint 
which  mostly  attacks  the  girls.  In  a  general  way 
Dr.  Quackenbos  defines  opsomania  as  a  mania  for 
articles  of  food,  particularly  delicatessen  and  con- 
fectionery. He  treats  opsomania  precisely  as  he 
would  treat  dipsomania  (the  drink  habit),  ormor- 
phinomania  (the  morphine  habit),  or  the  cigarette 
habit,  which  has  so  far  escaped  the  adventitious 
horror  of  being  christened  by  any  portentous 
Latin  name." 

]Max  O'Rell  says:  "Thanks  to  the  tact,  the 
brilliancy,  and  the  high  intellectual  attainments 
of  American  women,  one  can  causer  in  America, 
and  the  vocabulary  of  the  language  used  in  the 
United  States  ought  to  ])e  richer  by  one  word,  a 
good  equivalent  for  this  French  verb  which  must 
be  imperfectly  translated  by  'to  talk'  or  'to 
chat'  ;  for  causer  means  to  chat  with  wit,  humor, 
brilliancy,  and  great  refinement." 

In  a  sermon.  Rev.  George  F.  Pentecost  used 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.  143 

the  word  togetherness,  as  of  Christians  in  wor- 
ship. 

A  friend  of  mine,  a  literary  woman,  wrote  me 
in  this  playful  vein:  "I  am  getting  copyosis,  a 
mental  disease,  caused  ]iy  trying  to  adopt  the 
style  of  such  as  I  am  familiar  with,  in  order  to 
have  a  little  diversity." 

Mrs.  Mary  L.  I).  Ferris  coined  the  word 
loanor,  one  who  loans  ;  but  she  says  she  has  been 
rebuked  for  so  doing  and  is  sorry.  To  me  it 
seems  quite  as  eligible  as  many  other  words 
formed  with  that  suffix. 

Kate  Jordan  Vermilye  is  sorry,  too,  but  be- 
cause she  cannot  mention  having  coined  a  word. 
She  did  want  to  use  the  word  ivhetherinc)  to  ex- 
press the  doubtful  murmur  or  questioning  sound 
of  the  sea,  but  it  was  not  permitted  by  the  pub- 
lisher. This  word  is  already  in  existence,  though 
with  a  different  meaning  from  that  proposed  by 
Mrs.  Vermilye. 

Isabel  Gordon  Curtis,  the  editor  of  Good  House- 
keeping, writes  :  "  I  should  like  to  contribute  one 
late  addition  to  your  newly  coined  words,  only  it 
comes  from  an  uneducated  little  newsboy  instead 
of  a  famous  writer.  The  youngster  was  waking 
the  early  Sunday  slumbers  of  our  neighborhood 
by  a  cry  :  '  Hur-r-r-ruld,  Wur-r-ld,  Sun,  Jour-r-r- 
nul,  all  the  New  Yor-r-rk  Sunday  pa-per-r-rs.' 
'Bring  me  a  Herald'  shouted  the  man  across  the 
street.  'Haven't  got  one,'  cried  the  youngster. 
'I've  got  all  the  rest.  D'ye  want  one  of  'em?' 
'No,  I  don't.     I  want  the  Herald.     You've  just 


144  AVORD-COINAGE. 

been  hollering  Herald.''  'Well,  'twas  a  inisholler, 
I  guess.  I'm  all  out  of  Heralds.''  Misholler  is 
not  a  bad  word  at  all." 

Caroline  K.  Duer,  describing  a  game  of  polo, 
in  one  of  her  scherzo  stories  has  this  phrase : 
"  Men  were  shouting  and  ponies'  quick  little  feet 
thtid-thudding.'' 

A  certain  writer  who  is  not  ashamed  to  bring 
to  market  his  own  verbal  produce  uses  this  itali- 
cized word  in  one  of  his  rococo  musical  criticisms  : 
"  One  might  call  him  Professor,  but  it  would 
ambiguify  his  dignity  with  that  of  hypnotists, 
chiropodists,  barbers,  and  other  wearers  of  the 
word."  Needless  to  say,  this  is  stodgy,  if  not 
faulty. 

There  have  been  suggested  a  number  of  words 
which  fastidious  philologers  insist  are  more  ele- 
gant and  concise  than  "horseless  carriage."  It 
is  hoped  that  something  more  appropriate  and 
less  of  a  mouthful  than  automobile  will  be  de- 
vised. 

The  heteroclitic  and  gauche  word  ergograph 
sounds  rather  funny  when  literally  translated,  as 
"thereforegraph."  It  is  a  machine  invented  by 
Professor  A.  ^losso,  of  Italy,  for  the  purpose  of 
determining  the  stored-up  nervous  energy  of 
school-children. 

A  resident  of  Brooklyn,  over  the  initials 
S.  B.  K.,  recently  addressed  a  communication  to 
the  New  York  Times,  of  the  following  import: 
"  When  a  married  gentleman  at  home  says  cas- 
ually that  he  is  pleased^ with  his  new  typewriter, 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   145 

his  wife  is  a  little  curious  to  know  the  gram- 
matical gender  of  the  new  article — whether  it  be 
feminine  or  neuter,  she  or  it.  I  think  if  the 
Times  will  lead  in  calling  the  instrument  a  fijjjo- 
fjrapli,  the  operator  a  typogmpher,  and  the  prod- 
uct of  the  operation,  for  which  there  is  no  single 
word,  a  typogramy  this  nomenclature  would  be 
adopted.  This  is  not  a  bad  suggestion  ;  for  it 
meets  an  awkward  deficiency  in  our  language. 

It  is  a  good  sign  to  see  such  writers  as  Sir 
Robert  Hart  using  "'diet "  in  place  of  dictum,  as 
we  mav  say  "  best "  instead  of  behest.  The  more 
superfluous  syllables  we  get  rid  of,  without  the 
slightest  injury  to  the  meaning,  the  better  it  will 
be  for  our  loggy  language. 

Brander  Matthews  can  only  say  that  to  the  best 
of  his  recollection  and  intention  he  has  never  in- 
vented a  new  word ;  but  that  he  is  not  very 
violently  opposed  to  decent  neologisms  is  attested 
by  the  quotation  (on  p.  37)  from  one  of  his  articles 
in  The  Bookman. 

Mere  declaimers,  though  they  may  imply  a 
prejudice  against  neologism,  are  not  necessarily 
ex  parte  arguments  against  word-coinage.  Pro- 
fessor Charles  E.  Xorton  is  not  aware  that  he  has 
ever  coined  a  word.  With  rare  insight  he  ob- 
serves that  words  deliberately  coined  are  seldom 
of  worth,  except  as  mere  names,  and  have  no  life 
of  their  own.  The  words  which  live  are  rarely 
the  conscious  creation  of  any  man. 

The  effort  of  Thomas  Nelson  Page  has  been  not 
so  much  to  invent  new  words,  as  to  put  into  his 
10 


146  WORD-COIXAGE. 

books  the  words  which,  though  uuusiial  in  our 
cities  at  present,  are  iu  current  use  in  the  okl  part 
of  Virginia.  He  is  convinced  that  these  words 
are  good  old  English,  and  they  serve  the  double 
purpose  of  showing  the  origin  of  the  life  he 
describes  and  of  expressing  his  ideas  very  vigor- 
ously. 

Elizabeth  P.  Train  regrets  that  it  is  not  her 
good  fortune  to  be  possessed  of  sufficient  original- 
ity to  supplement  any  existing  need  in  our  lan- 
guage by  words  of  her  own  coinage. 

General  Charles  King  begs  leave  to  say  that 
to  the  best  of  his  knowledge  and  belief  he  never 
coined  any  more  words  than  he  has  money. 
There  is  a  chance  here  for  a  waggish  query,  but 
I  refrain. 

Lilian  Bell,  autlior  of  The  Indinct  of  Siep- 
faiherhood,  etc.,  cannot  discover  that  she  ever 
coined  a  word  in  anything  she  has  written.  She 
is  quite  satisfied  to  use  "  the  few  feeble  words  of 
English  "  at  her  tongue's  end,  but  to  group  old 
words  in  sucli  a  way  that  her  phrases  will  stick 
in  peoples'  minds  and  the  words  will  seem  new. 
Had  I  asked  her  for  coined  phrases,  she  might 
have  told  me  that,  so  fiir  as  she  knows,  the  terms, 
now  passed  into  current  use,  of  flos.v/-f/irI,  girl- 
baehelor,  man  under  thirty-five,  and  the  like,  were 
original  with  her.     But  she  never  coins  words. 

Professor  Barret  Wendell  really  does  not 
know  whether  he  ever  coined  a  word  or  not.  If 
so,  he  says  the  fact  is  not  to  his  credit.  The  lan- 
guage affords  full  scope  for  any  ideas  he  ever  had. 


I 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   147 

Hamilton  W.  ^Mabie,  while  very  much  inter- 
ested in  my  endeavor  to  make  a  collection  of 
word-coinages,  fears  he  never  had  either  the  orig- 
inality or  the  audacity  to  coin  words,  and  he  re- 
calls no  such  coinages  in  his  books. 

William  Dean  Howells  states  that  if  he  has 
coined  any  words,  he  knows  not  what  or  where 
thev  are.  How  al)out  Altriiria,  Mr.  Howells? 
(See  p.  260.; 

Richard  Henry  Stoddard  declares  that  if  he 
has  ever  coined  a  word,  he  has  forgotten  that 
felony  against  our  good  old  mother  tongue,  which 
has  more  tokens  than  he  has  any  occasion  to  cir- 
culate. He  does  not  think  he  could  "  shove  the 
queer  "  if  he  wanted  to.  Honest  money  or  none 
for  him. 

George  W.  Cable  seems  to  be  in  doubt.  He 
has  no  idea  how  many  word-coinages  he  has 
made,  nor  what  they  are,  nor  in  what  circum- 
stances they  originated. 

Henry  James  is  afraid  he  is  wholly  unable  to 
aid  me  in  collecting  words  either  of  his  own  in- 
vention or  of  any  one's  else.  He  has  attempted 
to  write  only  in  a  language  already  existing, 
and  has  found  that  a  literary  task  abundantly, 
and  superabundantly,  difficult  by  itself  Compli- 
cated further  by  extemporized  and  imported  sub- 
stances, it  would,  he  fancies,  have  got  the  better 
of  him  altogether.  In  short, 'he  has  never  had 
anything  to  say  to  which  some  word  or  other  al- 
ready forming  a  part  of  human  speech  has  not  had 
to  his  sense  somethino-  to  contri]:)ute  of  its  own. 


148  WORD-COINAGE. 

Frank  R.  Stockton  does  not  remember  that 
any  words  of  his  invention  have  appeared  in  his 
works.     Certainly  he  hopes  that  this  is  the  case. 

It  seems  to  F.  Marion  Crawford  that  a  book  on 
word-coinage  should  be  at  once  interesting  to  the 
public  and  useful  to  writers.  Nevertheless  he 
fails  to  see  how  to  answer  my  questions.  He  has 
always  tried  to  avoid  coining  words  in  his  writ- 
ings, while  seeking  old  ones  in  all  good  authors, 
in  the  hope  of  finding  useful  expressions  having 
good  authority.  If  any  one  will  point  out  to  him 
his  word-coinages,  he  will  be  glad  to  help  me — 
and  himself — with  any  explanation  or  excuse  he 
can  find. 

Edward  S.  Van  Zile  has  never  been  fortunate 
enough  to  add  a  new  word  to  our  language.  Our 
tongue,  destined  to  subdue  all  tongues,  has  not 
suffered,  he  remarks,  from  his  inability  to  add  to 
its  riches.  After  all,  do  library-made  words  ever 
come  into  the  world  in  possession  of  the  germ  of 
immortality,  asks  Mr.  Van  Zile,  and  he  con- 
tinues :  "  If  I  were  searching  for  New  Anglo- 
Saxon  words  I'd  go  to  the  street  urchin,  not  to  the 
professional  writer.  It  is  not  the  overeducated 
oyster  that  begets  the  pearl." 

Bliss  Perry,  editor  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  has 
tried  to  discover  some  of  his  word-coinages  for  my 
benefit,  but  without  success.  Perhaps  some  years 
spent  in  teaching  rhetoric  makes  one  quite  too  shy 
of  neologisms. 

Professor  George  E.  Woodberry  cannot  say 
that  he  regrets  not  having  any  words  of  his  own 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   149 

coinage  to  seud  me ;  l)ut  so  far  as  he  knows  there 
is  none. 

William  H.  Rideing  believes  he  can  acquit 
himself  of  transgressions  of  this  kind,  having 
found  a  normal  vocabulary  sufficient  for  his  needs, 
but  the  subject,  he  admits,  is  an  interesting  one. 

The  negro  poet,  Paul  Laurence  Dunl)ar, 
modestly  assures  me  that  he  would  not  dare  to 
take  any  liberties  with  the  English  language. 
In  dialect — well,  they  all  say  that  is  a  different 
thing,  and  so  it  is  in  many  a  volume. 

Kate  Douglass  Wiggin  says  she  has  a  particu- 
larly bad  memory,  but  she  does  not  think  she 
ever  coined  a  word  in  her  life. 

Professor  Charles  H.  Moore  believes  he  has 
not  invented  any  words  ;  though  he  should  have 
no  objection  to  word-coinage  if  a  purpose  could  l^e 
served  better  so  than  other\vise. 

General  Lew  Wallace  has  no  recollection  of 
coining  any  word.  Daniel  G.  Gilman,  late  Presi- 
dent of  Johns  Hopkins  L'niversity.  has  no  word 
to  father,  and  President  Eliot,  of  Harvard,  most 
emphatically  pleads  "  not  guilty." 

Mrs.  Amelia  E.  Barr  advised  me  to  compile  a 
list  of  Anglo-Saxon  words  and  let  neologisms  go 
to  grass.  But  several  manuals  of  Anglo-Saxon 
serve  very  well. 

Mrs.  M.  E.  W.  Sherwood  has  never  to  her 
knowledge  coined  a  word.  She  has  found  our 
nol)le  English  tongue  copious  enough. 

J.  W.  De  Forest  wished  he  could  help  me,  but 
remembered  no  word-coinages  of  his  own.     He 


150  WORD-COINAGE. 

had  but  two  of  his  works  within  reach,  and  they 
seemed  to  be  without  noticeable  linguistic  novel- 
ties. 

Vida  D.  Scudder  is  not  aware,  so  far  as  her 
memory  serves  her,  of  having  coined  any  words 
that  appear  in  her  published  works. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  F.  Hopkinson  Smith 
to  send  a  list  of  his  word-coinages  without  more 
research  than  he  could  give  to  it.  And  even  if 
he  had  the  time  to  make  such  a  search,  he  might 
not  find  a  single  worthy  example. 

Theodore  Roosevelt  has  no  knowledge  of  any 
word-coinages  of  his  own.  He  is  sure  he  remem- 
bers none. 

Mrs.  Burton  Harrison  really  has  no  idea  that 
she  ever  attempted  to  coin  a  word.  She  has  been, 
always,  an  ardent  disciple  of  English  undefiled, 
and  any  possible  lapses  from  it  have  been  her  mis- 
fortune, not  her  fault.  She  is  kind  enough  to  add 
that  she  will  look  with  interest  for  the  results  of 
my  research. 

Margaret  Beland  doubts  if  she  can  lay  claim 
to  the  production  of  a  new  word.  So  far  as  she 
can  recall  she  has  not  coined  any  word  which 
would  express  any  particular  idea  of  her  own. 
She  thinks  a  book  upon  this  subject  would  be  im- 
mensely interesting  and  of  great  philologic  value. 

In  what  little  he  has  written  for  publication 
Professor  Lewis  E.  Gates  has  tried  not  to  do  any 
counterfeiting.  He  has  contented  himself  with 
the  current  coin  of  the  realm  of  letters. 

Never  having  been  consciously  a  coiner  of  words, 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   151 

the  late  Charles  Dudley  Warner  did  not  see  how 
he  could  help  me  in  my  inquiry. 

Lilian  Whiting  does  not  believe  she  ever 
coined  a  word,  but  adds,  "  I  wish  I  had."  This 
phrase  is  strictly  feminine  and  simply  delicious. 

Goldwin  Smith,  of  Toronto,  Canada,  is  not  con- 
scious that  he  has  invented  any  new  words  ;  but 
one  sometimes  does  it  unintentionally,  as  by  coin- 
ing a  verb  from  some  already  existing  noun,  or  by 
turning  an  adjective  like  brusque  into  a  verb — 
brusqued,  etc. 

Charles  G.  D.  Roberts  doubtless  has  coined 
some  words  in  his  time,,  but  if  so,  he  does  not  re- 
member the  "delinquency."  He  is  not  at  all 
sure  that  a  search  through  all  his  books  would  re- 
veal enough  of  them  to  be  worthy  the  scantiest 
paragraph.  For  so  small  a  return,  he  is  sure,  I 
would  not  condemn  him  to  such  a  familiarity  ^vith 
his  own  works  as  this  would  entail.  Senously,  if 
he  were  at  all  given  to  word-coinage, — which  he 
is  not,  being  rather  a  purist, — he  should  take 
pleasure  in  complying  \dth  my  request,  but  he 
has  in  vain  racked  his  brain  for  an  instance  in 
point. 

Gilbert  Parker,  now  a  member  of  the  English 
House  of  Commons,  feels  the  responsibility  of  his 
own  "  sins  "  in  the  direction  of  word-coinage.  It 
is  probable  that  he  has  been  guilty,  but  he  be- 
lieves he  has  also  had  the  good  taste  not  to  be 
proud  of  his  inventions  and  to  have  forgotten  them 
with  becoming  haste.  He  finds  himself  unable  to 
resurrect  these  monuments  of  literarv  ambition, 


152  WORD-COINAGE. 

though  wishing  me  all  success  in  the  under- 
taking. 

Charles  Barnard  can  only  say  that  he  has  not 
knowingly  been  guilty  of  the  "offense  of  word- 
coining.  He  has  always  found  the  English  lan- 
guage quite  sufficient  for  all  his  purposes.  He 
has,  on  the  other  hand,  assisted  at  the  quiet  extinc- 
tion of  several  useless  words  of  a  technical  nature. 
In  his  work  on  the  Century  Dictionary  he  sup- 
pressed a  number  of  words  that  now  have  no  use 
and  are  disappearing.  There  are,  however,  a 
great  number  of  new  and  useful  words  that  have 
not  exactly  been  coined,  but  have  been  evolved 
naturally  out  of  the  necessity  for  new  terms  to  de- 
scribe new  things.  There  are  many  of  these 
really  good  words  now  in  daily  use  in  the  arts  and 
trades,  and  my  correspondent  thinks  that  a  series 
of  essays  on  such  words  would  be  well  worth 
doing. 

Margaret  Sutton  Briscoe  has  contributed  no 
words  of  her  own  that  she  knows  of  to  the  lan- 
guage. She  is  not,  in  fact,  in  much  sympathy  with 
that  practice,  valuable  as  it  has  often  proved.  If 
she  has  ever  coined  words  in  her  waiting,  it  has 
been  done  unconsciously.  There  seems  to  her 
something  artificial  in  the  conscious  effort  unless 
some  new  form  of  expression  cryingly  demands  a 
new  word  ;  then,  she  thinks,  it  should  rather  creep 
by  proper  usage  into  the  language. 

Viola  Roseboro  chooses  out  of  courtesy  to  re- 
gard it  as  a  compliment  to  be  considered  among 
possible  word-coiners,  but  is  rather  grieved,  she 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   153 

finds,  at  iiot  being  able  to  produce  one  little  word 
of  her  own  coinage  ;  and  yet  she  thinks  she  has 
been  right  in  always  regarding  herself  as  too 
small  a  person  to  take  such  creation  upon  her- 
self. 

Winston  Churchill,  the  author  of  those  much 
discussed  novels,  Richard  Carvel  and  The  Crisis, 
with  rather  unnecessary  modesty  regrets  to  say 
that,  in  the  limited  course  of  his  compositions,  he 
has  never  coined  any  original  words,  nor  does  he 
feel  that  he  has  advanced  far  enough  in  his  pro- 
fession to  give  any  views  of  value  on  the  subject. 

Robert  Barr,  who  has  the  good  fortune  to  be  a 
Scotchman,  a  Canadian,  and  an  American  rolled 
into  one,  writes  jocularly  from  England,  asking 
why  he  should  coin  words  when  there  are  thou- 
sands now  in  the  language  which  he  doesn't  know 
the  meaning  of  and  which  he  can't  spell.  The 
man  who  would  coin  a  word  would  coin  a  lead 
dollar,  he  asserts.  He  also  says  that  if  Kipling, 
Mark  Twain,  Saltus,  Hawthorne,  Stedman,  and 
numerous  others  have  confessed  to  me  that  they 
have  committed  this  crime,  then  it  is  my  duty 
not  to  write  a  book  on  it,  but  to  inform  the  police 
and  get  this  notorious  gang  of  counterfeiters 
placed  where  they  belong.  The  only  man  who 
has  a  right  to  coin  a  word,  in  Barr's  opinion,  is  the 
inventor  who  makes  a  machine  which  comes  into 
the  world  without  a  name,  and  therefore  needs  one. 
Tesla  and  Edison  have  the  right  to  construct  new 
words  ;  Kipling  and  Ho  wells  have  not.  When  I 
land  these  men  in  Sing  Sing,  Barr  wants  me  to 


154  WORD-COINAGE. 

let  him  know,  and  he  will  come  over  and  "do 
time"  with  them  ;  for  if  he  does  not  invent  words, 
he  says  he  has  committed  other  misdemeanors 
which  entitle  him  to  put  on  the  same  picturesque 
costume  that  they  will  wear,  and — well,  they  are 
all  excellent  company,  in  jail  or  out. 

Mary  E.  Wilkins  is  sorry,  but  she  cannot  re- 
member coining  any  words,  and  is  so  very  busy 
that  she  is  unable  to  look  through  all  her  pub- 
lished works  and  to  make  the  necessary  notes. 

Mrs.  Harriet  Prescott  Spotford  does  not  think 
she  has  ever  coined  a  word.  If  she  has,  it  has 
been  unconsciously  and  ignorantly.  She  may 
have  used  somie  archaic  words,  clinging  to  the 
memory  from  readings  in  early  English,  but  no 
more  than  most  writers  have  done,  she  hopes. 

Edith  M.  Thomas,  while  appreciative  of  the 
honor  the  inquiry  implies,  is  not,  she  believes,  able 
t(3  add  any  word  curios  to  this  collection,  and,  in- 
deed, if  she  had  ventured  upon  any  verbal  inven- 
tion in  "the  small  plot  of  literature  "  in  which  she 
works,  they  would  scarcely  deserve  perpetuation. 

Save  where  there  has  been  no  escape  from  dia- 
lect, Owen  Wister  believes  he  never  stepped  out- 
side the  printed  dictionary.  He  hopes  not.  My 
question  about  coining  words  made  him  open 
Worcester's  Unabridged — it  happened  to  open  at 
page  1179,  where  he  found  raip,  raivel,  rakee, 
rakeshame,  rakesfale,  rakevein,  ralliance,  rahpite, 
and  ramadan,  and  as  he  had  never  heard  of  any 
of  them  before,  he  turned  for  consolation  to 
another  page.     It    happened    to    be    166,   where 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    155 

there  struck  his  eye  boxen,  boyar,  boyan,  boy- 
blind,  boyism,  boyn,  boyship,  brabble,  braccate, 
brack,  bracky,  bracteolate,  and  brad,  to  say  nothing 
ofbrachygraphy,  bracJujstockJirone,  and  some  others, 
— some  forty  words  on  the  first  two  pages  he 
tried, — and  all  entirely  unknown  to  him  until 
that  moment.  Further  experiments  brought  rev- 
elations equally  humiliating.  So,  it  will  be  seen, 
the  English  language  is  not  only  enough  for 
Owen  Wister,  but  a  good  deal  too  much,  and  he 
will  not  attempt  to  add  to  it  at  present. 

A  portion  of  this  correspondence  was  published 
in  the  Chautauqaan,  and  later,  in  the  February 
(1900)  number  of  that  magazine,  appeared  a  let- 
ter from  Mr.  Wister,  as  follows : 

"Editor  Chautauquan : 

"Dear  Sir:  In  an  article  on  the  coinage 
of  words  recently  published  by  you  a  writer 
(Ingersoll  Lockwood)  says,  among  other  things, 
this:  [Here  Mr.  Wister  quotes  what  Ingersoll 
Lockwood  says  on  page  120  of  this  book  about 
Englishmen  being  the  great  word-makers,  etc.] 

"To  these  observations  I  shall  offer  no  com- 
ments of  my  own ;  my  being  an  American  writer 
might  impair  their  value.  But  as  your  journal 
is  devoted  to  education,  let  me  quote  Professor 
Adams  S.  Hill,  of  Harvard  University,  in  his 
book  entitled  The  Foundations  of  Rhetoric,  paire 
30: 

"'A  writer  of  established  reputation  may  suc- 
ceed, now  and  then,  in  calling  back  words  from 


156  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  grave ;  but  even  the  greatest  have  failed  in 
the  attempt.  A  writer  of  established  repiitatiou 
may,  by  adopting  a  provincial  or  a  vulgar  word 
as  his  own,  help  to  make  it  good  English  ;  but 
great  authors  are  not  those  who  are  most  swift  to 
coin  words  themselves,  or  to  use  those  which  lack 
the  stamp  of  authority.  "  The  two  most  copious 
and  fluent  of  our  prose  writers,  Johnson  and  Ma- 
caulay,  may  be  cited  on  this  head,"  says  a  recent 
writer  (John  Earle,  English  Prose,  London,  Smith, 
Elder  and  Co.,  1890),  "for  the  first  hardly  ever 
coined  a  word ;  the  second,  never.  They  had  not 
the  temptation  ;  their  tenacious  memories  were 
ever  ready  with  a  supply  of  old  and  appropriate 
words,  which  were,  therefore,  the  best,  because 
their  associations  were  established  in  them." 

" '  If  there  were  words  enough  in  the  language 
to  supply  the  needs  of  ^lacaulay,  there  are  surely 
enough  for  ordinary  writers.  For  them  the  only 
safe  rule  is  to  use  no  word  that  is  not  accepted  as 
good  English  by  the  best  judges.  This  rule  is 
well  expressed  by  Pope  (see  p.  3).  In  our  day 
obsolete  or  obsolescent  words  are  less  tempting 
than  new-fangled  expressions.  For  one  devotee  of 
old  English  who  insists  on  writing  "  agone "  for 
"ago"  or  "gone,"  or  "inwit"  for  "conscience," 
or  on  publishing  a  "foreword"  instead  of  a 
"preface,"  there  are  hundreds  of  ready  writers 
who  try  their  hands  at  the  manufacture  of  new 
words,  or  who  snap  up  the  manufactures  of  others. 
Those  who  know  least  of  English  as  it  is  are  pre- 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.   157 

cisely  those  who  are  most  ready  to  disfigure  their 
sentences  with  English  as  it  is  not.' 

"In  closing,  allow  me  to  congratulate  your  con- 
tributor (Ingersoll  Lock  wood )  upon  his  use  of  the 
word  'relationist.'  On  page  1209  of  Worcester's 
Unabridged  I  find  that  it  has  hitherto  meant 
relative." 

The  late  William  Preston  Johnston,  son  of  the 
Confederate  General,  Albert  Sidney  Johnston,  and 
President  of  Tulane  University  of  Louisiana,  had 
a  reverence  for  the  English  speech,  and  always 
did  what  he  could  to  stand  up  for  its  purity.  He 
was  well  aware  that  language  is  fluent,  moving 
ever  with  the  restless  tide  of  human  thought,  and 
hence  he  could  not  set  himself  up  to  be  what  is 
called  a  purist,  resisting  every  novelty  of  speech 
or  new  coinage  of  words  adapted  to  new  modifica- 
tions of  thought  and  condition.  But  he  did  not 
regard  them  as  part  of  the  speech  of  the  people  on 
the  mere  dictum  of  bold  innovators  or  ingenious 
word-coiners,  whether  they  represented  newspapers 
or  dictionaries.  For  his  own  part,  he  never  con- 
sciously coined  a  word,  unless  in  nonsense  verses, 
and  he  found  the  English  language  sufficient  for 
all  the  best  thinking  he  could  do.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  most  of  the  so-called  word-coinages  that 
he  saw  were  merely  counters  or  crude  counter- 
feits. He  did  not  deny,  however,  the  right  of 
any  individual  to  utter  them  any  more  than  he 
did  the  right  to  talk  slang  or  thieves'  Latin,  for 
that  matter.     To  him  it  was    all  a  question   of 


158  WORD-COINAGE. 

taste — of  the  sense  of  duty  that  one  feels  in  up- 
holding the  dignity  of  the  mother  tongue. 

The  late  Professor  Moses  Coit  Tyler  did  not  re- 
member that  in  serious  writing  and  for  publica- 
tion he  ever  coined  a  word,  but  he  did  remember 
a  number  of  instances  where  he  was  strongly 
tempted  to  do  so,  and  when  he  resisted  long 
enough  he  always  found  out  that  the  English  lan- 
guage was  already  copiously  provided  for  the  ex- 
pression of  any  idea  or  shade  of  an  idea  that  he 
had  to  communicate.  In  other  words,  he  did  not 
favor  the  free  and  umlimited  coinage  of  words 
(for  the  uses  of  oral  or  printed  discourse)  any 
more  than  he  did  of  silver,  or  potatoes,  or  cedar 
posts.  Conservatism  in  language  is  a  great  vir- 
tue. Our  language,  being  a  living  one,  he 
thought  would  grow  fast  enough  without  any  one's 
conscious  effort  thereto. 

So  far  as  he  knows,  George  Gary  Eggleston  has 
never  "  sinned  against  the  English  language  "  by 
adding  words  of  his  own  to  it.  He  has  always 
found  its  vocabulary  adequate  to  the  expression 
of  every  thought  that  his  mind  has  been  able  to 
conceive.  He  has  used  dialect  forms,  of  course, 
in  writing  dialect  stories.  Inasmuch  as  we  have 
in  English  a  vocabulary  three  or  four  times  as 
great  as  that  of  any  other  language,  Eggleston 
has  never  felt  it  incumbent  upon  him  to  add  any- 
thing to  the  list  of  words  permitted  in  order 
to  write  English.  If,  in  any  moment  of  inadvert- 
ence, he  has  used  in  his  writings  a  word  not 
found  in  the  dictionaries,  or  if  he  has  used  a  word 


NEOLOGISMS  BY  LIVING  AMERICAN  AUTHORS.    159 

iu  a  sense  not  recognized  by  the  dictionaries 
of  the  English  language,  he  has  only  to  beg 
the  pardon  of  the  English  language,  which  is  the 
one  thing  he  has  studied  most  diligently  and 
which  he  respects  most  of  all  things  in  the 
world. 

Other  letters  of  the  same  or  of  similar  import 
might  be  mentioned,  but  enough  is  as  good  as 
a  feast.  We  have  here  many  a  hint  of  author- 
doxy,  if  the  levity  may  be  permitted,  and  some 
good  words  are  cached  in  this  volume  for  those 
who  wish  to  use  them.  There  are  others  which 
would  need  an  apology,  were  they  not  worthless 
on  their  face. 

It  is  not  easy  to  classify  those  authors  who 
seem  to  be  "  on  the  fence,"  irresolute,  and  uncer- 
tain which  side  to  take  or  what  to  think  ;  or,  if 
they  have  well-riveted  ideas  on  the  subject,  they 
seem  to  fear  that  they  will  be  compromised  some- 
how by  letting  them  out.  No  small  number  of 
others  are  disinclined  to  rummage  through  their 
published  works  (and  who  could  blame  them  ? ) 
for  their  coinages,  as  though  ashamed  to  uncover 
them  to  the  glare  of  posterity.  I  think  those 
belonging  to  this  class  might  better  have  dis- 
avowed in  toto  their  offenses,  for  so  they  appear 
to  regard  them,  judging  from  the  sheepish  phrase- 
ology of  their  admissions. 

Still  others  perhaps  reserve  the  right  to  exploit 
their  verbal  confections  in  their  own  way  at  some 
future  time,  should  there  be  any  glory  attached  to 
their  excavations  by  virtue  of  the  possible  public 


160  WORD-COINAGE. 

scramble  for  such  relics.  At  all  events,  they  are 
laid  away  in  our  literary  catacombs,  and  it  is  not 
my  ambition  to  exhume  them  after  the  method  of 
the  body  snatcher. 


CHAPTER  X. 

SLANG. 

There  is  slang  and  slang. 

(Let  us  first  have  Webster's  definition. 

^Slang — a  new  word  that  has  no  just  reason 
for  existence  ;  a  popular  but  unauthorized  word, 
phrase,  or  mode  of  expression  ;  the  jargon  of  some 
particular  calling  or  class  in  societQ' 

Recording  to  this,  all  words  and  expressions  not 
approved  by  the  lexicographers  are  slang.  They 
cease  to  be  such  only  when,  by  reason  of  long- 
continued  popularity  and  general  usage,  they 
are  deemed  worthy  of  a  place  in  the  dictionarv^ 

"The  definition  of  words,"  says  Hannah  ^fore, 
"  is  often  involved  in  their  etymology,"  and  for  this 
reason  slang  has  to  serve  an  apprenticeship,  so  to 
speak,  before  it  is  raised,  if  at  all,  to  the  dignity  of 
a  generic  meaning.  It  is  held  on  probation  until 
it  either  wins  its  brevet  of  literary  acceptance 
pr  dies  of  atrophy,  as  languages  themselves  die. 
We  often  know  what  a  slang  word  signifies,  with- 
^  out  knowing  anything  at  all  about  its  pedigree  or 
genealog^  (Lideed,  nine  times  out  of  ten  it  is 
a  bastard  oryhalf-breed,  and  often  not  even  that. 
It  comes  into  the  -svorld  without  formal  birth,  and 
11  ifil 


162  WORD-COINAGE. 

in  this,  as  in  other  respects,  it  differs  from  the  con- 
sciously evolved  word,  which  has  Greek  or  Latin 
or  other  linguistic  ancestors.  Words  which  are 
the  product  of  the  study  and  the  laboratory  have 
the  advantage  of  noble  blood  to  start  with  ;  while 
the  pariah  word  shuffles  along  through  the  alleys 
of  the  slums,  unable  to  tell  who  its  father  was^ 
Nor  would  its  father,  if  it  had  one,  care  to  own  iL 

Yet  the  English  language  is  steadily  enriched 
by  words  and  phrases  selected  from  this  jargon  of 
particular  callings  or  classes  in  society.  It  em- 
bodies particularly  the  judgments  of  human  na- 
ture as  it  exists  to-day,  and  is  so  articulated  as 
to  conform  best  to  the  cast  of  the  average  modern 
mind.  It  is  sui  generis,  and  it  is  as  genuine  as  the 
mushroom,  which  it  resembles  in  the  quickness 
and  mystery  of  its  growth.  It  may  seem  some- 
times to  be  a  counterfeit,  but  is  never  a  conscious 
counterfeit;  that  is  to  say,  it  is  not  consciously 
evolved  according  to  philologic  formulas,  and 
therefore  its  similarity  to  some  other  word  is 
purely  accidental. 

We  may  say  that  intuitive  reason  plays  its 
part  as  much  as  ever  it  did  in  the  drama  of 
language;  only  slang  is  the  venting,  the  make- 
shift, of  the  unlettered  masses.  To  say  that  no 
principle  of  analogy,  of  onomatopoeia,  or  of  meta- 
phor enters  into  this  kind  of  speech  is  to  deny 
that  the  people  have  intelligence ;  whereas  among 
them  is  the  most  mother  wit,  the  best  common 
sense,  and  from  their  loins  spring  the  greatest  men 
of  genius. 


SLANG. 


163 


When  authoritative  writers  begin  to  use  a  slang 
phrase  or  idiom  then  there  is  promise  that  it 
will  gain  admission  into  the  next  dictionary. 
Bartlett  says:  "Slang  terms  will  remain  in  use 
only  so  long  as  they  may  be  useful  in  eollo<iuial 
language.  They  may  then  be  supplanted  by 
others*  more  expressive,  and  sink  into  oblivion." 
'But  a  certain  percentage  of  them  become  engrafted 
on  our  language,  and  the  slang  of  fifty  years  ago 
m^^  be  elegant  usage  to-day. 

Slang  is  a  necessity — to  Wall  street,  to  fashion- 
alSe  clubs,  to  the  college  youth,  to  pugilists, 
to  thieves,  to  the  police,  to  the  factory,  to  politi- 
cians, to  sportsmen,  to  the  stage,  to  sailors,  to 
soldiers,  to  shopkeepers,  and  what  not.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  population  uses  it,  and  in  many 
cases  it  is  terse  and  decidedly  effective.  Some 
very  curious  metaphors  have  been  welded  into 
and  become  a  part  of  our  Americanese.  It  seems 
to  be  the  tendency  of  the  illiterate  masses  to  settle 
all  things,  great  and  small,  by  an  epigram  or  an 
epithet.  Hence  it  is  out  of  the  question  for  purists 
to  abolish  slang^  But  before  going  further  into 
the  general  subject  let  us  ascertain  what  the 
character  of  current  American  slang  is  by  citing 
various  examples  of  it. 

Though  it  is  condemned  as  a  vulgar  colloquial- 
ism by  those  who  would  keep  the  "well  of  Eng- 
lish pure  and  undefiled,"  the  term  "hustler"  is 
singularly  descriptive  and  understood  by  every- 
body. He  is  a  product  of  our  bustling,  rushing, 
competitive  American  life.     No  other  word   ex- 


164  WORD-COINAGE. 

presses  quite  so  comprehensively  this  energetic 
human  unit,  and  the  word  doubtless  has  come  to 
stay.  It  has  an  excuse  for  living  in  that  it  can 
boast  of  blood  relations  in  the  dictionary. 

That  densely  thronged  neighborhood  lying  be- 
tween the  Bowery  and  the  East  River,  known  as 
the  Eas^t  Side,  in  New^jidvJsjjer-haps  the  inott 
prolific  breeder  of  slang  in  this  country.  There 
toil  and  hao:o;le  and  exist  "  all  sorts  and  conditions 

Bo 

of  men "  ;  there  one  hears  a  Babel  of  tongues, 
and  out  of  this  polyglot  of  Polak,  Yiddish,  Italian, 
Syrian,  French,  German,  and  so  on  come  many 
of  the  verbal  suggestions  which  rapidly  gain  cur- 
rency, and  through  the  lips  of  the  American 
street  Arab  receive  such  twists  and  modifications 
as  are  necessary  to  mold  them  into  the  semblance 
of  English.  Of  the  terms  you  hear  in  this  squalid 
region,  as  you  may  hear  them  elsewhere,  a  partial 
list  follows,  with  their  meanings  : 

"  In  the  push,"  synonymous  with  "  in  the  swim," 
which  latter  phrase,  by  the  way,  is  society 
slang. 

"  Long  green  " — green  bills  or  greenbacks. 

*'A  wad,"  "a  bundle,"  and  "a  bunch" — all 
mean  rolls  of  green  bills,  hence  "a  thick  wad." 

"  To  brace"  is  to  borrow. 

"  To  touch  "  sometimes  means  to  steal  and  some- 
times to  borrow. 

"  To  swipe  "  is  to  steal. 

"To  pinch"  means  to  steal;  also  to  arrest 
a  person. 

"  On  your  uppers  "  is  to  have  no  money. 


SLANG.  165 

"To  throw  a  front"  or  "bluff"  meaus  to  look 
well  and  prosperous  with  no  money  in  your 
pocket  or  within  your  control. 

"To  spar  for  meals"  means  to  struggle  for 
life. 

"To  look  for  trouble"  means  wanting  to 
fight. 

"  Dead  easy  "  and  "  to  walk  down  Easy  street" 
are  to  do  anything  easily. 

"To  win  hands  down"  means  an  easy  victory. 

"To  growl"  is  to  threaten,  and  do  no  more. 

"To  turn  down"  and  "to  call  down"  mean  to 
repulse,  to  suppress,  to  put  a  stop  to. 

"  To  throw  down  "  means  to  do  a  mean  trick. 

"Lost  in  the  shuffle"  means  sunk  out  of  sight. 

"A  cop"  is  a  policeman,  equivalent  to  the 
English  "  bobby,"  which  ls  occasionally  heard. 

"  A  scrapper  "  is  a  man  who  fights. 

"A  farmer"  is  a  general  slang  term  for  any 
man  who  does  not  know  much,  coming,  of  course, 
from  the  cockney  contempt  of  the  country  and  the 
countryman. 

"A  gilley"  is  synonymous  with  "farmer." 

"A  yap"  and  "a  jay"  are  synonymous  with 
"farmer"  and  "gilley." 

"A  con"  is  an  abbreviation  of  confidence  maa 

"A  mug"  is  any  kind  of  a  citizen,  but  usually 
has  a  more  or  less  contemptuous  meaning. 

"A  lush"  is  one  who  drinks. 

"A  chink"  is  a  Chinaman. 

"A  guiney,"  also  "a  dago,"  is  an  Italian. 

"A  fly  fakir,"  a  gypsy  term,  meaning  simply  a 


166  WORD-COINAGE. 

shrewd,  plausible,  inventive  man.     In  other  words, 
an  ingenious  liar. 

"It's  up  to  you  "  means  something  menacing  or 
dangerous,  requiring  one's  best  powers  to  meet 
it. 

"Up  against  it"  means  an  ordeal  or  ill  luck 
of  any  kind. 

A  professional  appreciator,  a  man  who  laughs 
at  everything,  pays  for  nothing,  and  is  universally 
sympathetic,  is  known  as  a  "genial." 

"  The  handshaker "  is  another  name  for  a 
"genial." 

An  honest  man  is  described  by  the  terms 
"dead  square"  and  "dead  white."  It  may  be 
said  that  "  dead"  and  "smooth"  are  words  v/hich 
are  used  continually  and  before  many  a  slang 
term.  They  are  used  both  singly  and  together, 
as  a  "  smooth  handshaker,"  "  dead  smooth  genial." 
"  Smooth "  means  shrewd ;  thus  a  man  can  be 
"  dead  smooth,"  denoting  oily  and  dishonest.  In 
New  York  it  is  a  term  of .  reproach  ;  in  col- 
lg^e_slang  it  is^ather_gji  pxpression  of  praise  than" 
-otherwise.  -, 

"  To  have  your  hand  out "  is  to  beg,  and  "  a 
man  with  his  hand  out "  is  a  beggar. 

"To  stake"  and  "to  heel"  mean  to  lend. 

"  To  give  a  flash  "  is  to  show  money. 

"To  give  up"  and  "to  blow  in"  mean  to 
spend  money. 

"  To  stand  off"  is  to  have  charged,  to  get  some- 
thing on  credit,  or  to  put  off  or  get  extended  the 
time  of  payment  of  an  obligation. 


SLANG.  171 

'*  He  wouldu't  staud  for  it  "  means  chiefly  i«. 
disclaim  responsibility  or  to  repudiate  an  accu- 
sation, though  it  is  applied  to  other  instances. 

"  Well-heeled "  is  a  term  borrowed  from  the 
cock-pit,  and  means  to  have  plenty  of  money. 

"Lush,"  "booze,"  "a  ball,"  and  "hops"  for 
beer,  and  "red  liquor"  for  all  sorts  of  spirits 
except  gin  are  some  of  the  many' terms  for  drink. 

"Chasing  the  can,"  or  the  "duck,"  "rolling  the 
rock,"  and  "rushing"  or  "working  the  growler" 
all  mean  sending  the  tin  can  to  the  corner  bar- 
room for  beer.  In  the  West  they  call  it  "canning 
beer." 

"In  the  know"  means  behind  the  scenes,  so  to 
speak. 

"To  croak"  is  to  die;  vrhereas  "to  do  a  croak" 
and  "to  do  a  gun  croak"  mean  to  be  shot. 

"A  cold  frost"  and  "frost  crystals"  and  "he 
gave  me  the  marl)le  heart"  mean  to  be  treated 
coldly. 

"The  glad  hand"  means  a  real  or  simulated 
warmth  of  greeting. 

"To  queer"  really  means  to  place  one  in  a 
false  position  ;  but  it  also  has  other  meanings,  as 
"shoving  the  queer" — that  is,  to  pass  counterfeit 
money,  or,  as  when  a  man  hits  another  on  the 
head  with  a  club,  in  slang  parlance  he  "queers" 
him  w^th  a  club. 

"Wouldn't  that  jar  you?"  is  self-defined. 

"Blind  baggage"  means  riding  between  freight 
cars  and  is  a  tramp  expression. 


172  WORD-COINAGE. 

who  could  do  it  without  losing  somewhat,  if  not 
much,  of  the  vigor  aud  virility  of  the  "  Sage  of 
Chelsea." 

"I  am  .not  a  man  scrupulous  about  words  or 
names  or  such  things,"  said  Oliver  Cromwell,  in 
one  of  his  weak  moments.  If  he  had  taken 
more  pains  in  these  very  matters,  he  would  have 
been  a  greater  man.  The  mistake  often  made 
by  one  of  our  finest  American  singers  was  to 
drop  from  his  higher  moods  into  flippancy,  or, 
what  was  far  worse,  into  punning.  But  who 
shall  say  that  an  author  must  not  use  a  slang 
term — always  assuming  that  it  is  a  decent  one  ? 
Slang  is  not  always  humorous  or  satirical :  it 
may  be  pathetic,  nay,  deeply  serious.  In  a  few 
strokes  Sterne  could  sketch  a  mental  picture  or 
delineate  a  character.  He  was  a  fine  colorist 
with  words,  but  he  never  let  them  blur  his 
thoughts.  These  flowed  naturally  and  clearly. 
Few  books  possess  the  qualities  of  refined  feel- 
ing, the  many  graces  of  phraseology,  the  unique 
and  not  too  obvious  humor,  the  coherence  of 
subtle  reasoning,  and  the  charming  variety  of 
style  to  such  a  degree  as  A  Sentimental  Journey. 
Yet  Sterne  used  slang  more  or  less  and  did  not 
refrain  from  filching  a  felicitous  phrase  now  and 
then  from  a  contemporary  or  predecessor. 

Spoken  slang,  if  anything,  is  more  ofieusive  to 
refined  ears  than  printed  slang,  because  it  usually 
is  uttered  with  bravado  or  animus,  and  its  full 
force  comes  upon  one  like  a  shock.  The  same  sen- 
sibilities that  are  so  frequently  harried  by  vulgar 


SLANG.  1  /  o 

slang  are  the  readiest  to  perceive  that,  as  George 
Eliot  puts  it,  "The  right  word  is  always  a  power, 
and  communicates  its  definiteness  to  our  action." 
But  in  the  hands  of  a  skilful  author  slang  is 
made  diverting,  if  not  edifying.  What  gives  to 
Mary  E.  Wilkins'  New  England  stories  their 
chief  charm  to  me  is  their  true-to-uature  touches, 
and  particularly  the  life-like  dialogue  of  her 
characters.  I  believe  that  it  is  through  works 
such  as  hers  that  the  provincialisms  and 
idioms  of  a  certain  section  expand  and  become 
general  slang.  Bret  Harte  is  minutely  faithful 
to  the  colloquial  traditions  of  the  California 
mines  of  the  pioneer  period,  which  he  describes 
in  a  classical  style  that  offers  all  the  more  agree- 
able and  striking  contrast  to  the  coarse  verbali- 
ties  of  Yuba  Bill,  the  typical  parlance  of  Jack 
Hamlin,  and  the  vernacular  of  Poker  Flat  and 
Red  Gulch.  George  W.  Cable  happily  caught 
the  indigenous  expressions  of  the  Creoles  of  New 
Orleans ;  and  you  find  in  his  books  that  some  of 
his  best  characterizations  are  brought  out  in  the 
language  of  the  quarters,  voiced  by  the  person- 
ages themselves.  The  same  is  true  of  Kipling's 
stories  of  life  in  India  and  the  far  East ;  of  F. 
Marion  Crawford's  Italian  tales ;  of  Mr.  Howells' 
narratives  of  contemporaneous  life  among  middle- 
class  types  in  Boston,  New  York,  etc.  With 
equal  justice  and  discrimination  it  may  be  said 
of  Hamlin  Garland's  delineations  of  the  native 
and  Scandinavian  population  of  the  Great  North- 
west ;  of  Gil])ert  Parker's  browsings  in  Canada  ; 


174  WORD-COINAGE. 

of  James  Laue  Allen's  portraiture  of  Kentucky 
life  ;  of  Joel  Chandler  Harris's  studies  of  the 
Georgia  negro ;  and  of  a  score  or  more  of  others 
that  might  be  mentioned. 

The  main  secret  of  Dickens'  popularity  was 
that  he  knew  his  types ;  their  counterparts  were 
in  real  life.  They  talked  the  argot  of  the  London 
slums,  the  bombast  of  the  Old  Bailey,  the  synco- 
phantic  phrases  of  the  counting-room,  the  cockney 
jargon  of  the  sla}>up  swells.  English  slang,  of 
course,  is  no  longer  what  it  was  when  Dickens 
wrote,  and  in  judging  his  works  now  allowances 
should  be  made  for  these  changes.  Wherein 
certain  historical  romances  of  our  day  fail  artis- 
tically is  in  the  fact  that  their  personages,  with 
few  exceptions,  speak  in  the  language  of  the  last 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  which  very 
greatly  mars  the  illusion  ;  for  ho  one  who  has 
studied  the  epoch  with  which  WJien  Knighthood 
ivas  in  Flower  deals,  for  instance,  will  argue  that 
the  modes  of  thought  and  expression  of  the 
princess  Mary  Tudor  and  of  Henry  VIII.  were 
identical  with  our  own. 

I  have  shown  the  character  of  the  street  slang 
of  large  cities,  and  is  it  not  a  sorry  commentary 
upon  the  intelligence  of  so  many  thousands  of 
people  who  confine  themselves  to  this  kind  of  dis- 
course that  they  are  really  incapable  of  express- 
ing an  original  idea  in  terms  conforming  to  the 
rules  of  syntax'  and  good  taste?  Their  mental 
horizon  is  bounded  by  these  verbal  shambles; 
the  garden  of  their  minds  is  overgrown  with  the 


SLANG.  175 

poisonous  fungi   and   weeds  of  language.     Like 
slaves  to  the   drug  habit,  there  seems  to  be  no 
hope  for  them.     The  user  of  slang  from  youth 
becomes  hopelessly  dependent  upon  it.     Would 
not  a  refined  man  be  likely  to  change  his  opinion 
of  a  sweet  and   adorable  creature  to   whom   he 
said,  "Be  mine!"  and   who  replied:   "Oh,  come 
off!" — one   of  those   delightful   (?j  non-sequitors 
for  which  some  women  display  so  extreme  a  lik- 
ing?    And  there  are   authors   whose  center  of 
gravity  sinks  so  low  that  they  become  top-heavy 
with  conceit,  and  then   their   literary  malversa- 
tions often  challenge  and  merit  the  kind  of  criti- 
cism^which  is  neither  timid  nor  indulgent. 
/      ^^e  now  come  to  general  slang.     In  one  of  his 
(     "Condon    Letters"    William    L.   Alden    wrote: 
\  "  Not  long  ago  there  was  a  discussion  in  one  of 
jthe  London  dailies  as  to  the  origin  of  the  expres- 
ysion   'so  long,'  in  the  sense  of  good-by.     Some 
y  one   suggested   that    it   was    American,    but    an 

^s,  American  replied  that  the  expression  was  quite 
unknown    in    America,    which    shows    that    the 

/  writer  had  never  read  his  Walt  Whitman  and 
that  he  knew  very  little  of  America.  I  had  sup- 
posed that  the  expression  came  from  California, 
but  according  to  Whitman  it  vras  known  in  New 
York  before  we  ever  heard  of  California  slang. 
From  what  it  is  derived  I  have  not  the  slightest 

y^      idea,  but  that  it  is  American  is  as  certain  as  that 

^   b'gosh  is  America^j) 

This    phrase    reminds    me  of  a  tloral  wreath 
seen  at  the  funeral  of  a  promising   Harvard  stu- 


176  WORD-COINAGE. 

deut  some  years  ago.  It  bore  the  letters  S.  Y.  L., 
which,  not  being  the  initials  of  the  deceased, 
created  much  curiosity  as  to  what  they  stood  for. 
To  the  wreath  was  attached  the  card  of  the 
sender, — a  fellow-student, — who,  on  being  asked 
what  the  S.  Y.  L.  meant,  replied :  *'  See  you 
later  " — a  phrase  which  became  and  still  remains 
as  common  as  "so  long." 

"Another  American  expression,"  says  Mr. 
Alden,  "is  very  often  used  in  London,  without 
a  suspicion  of  its  origin.  English  women  say 
*  Great  Scott ! '  and  never  dream  that  they  are 
celebrating  the  fame  and  name  of  Winfield  Scott. 
In  the  days  of  the  Mexican  War,  when  we  were 
decidedly  younger  than  we  are  at  present,  we 
firmly  believed  that  General  Scott  was  the  great- 
est general  the  world  had  ever  seen.  It  became 
the  fashion  in  the  army  to  swear  by  him,  and 
the  custom  has  spread  to  England,  although 
General  Scott  is  nearly  forgotten,  and  the  Mexi- 
can War  now  ranks  in  our  estimation  with  the 
war  with  Sitting  Bull." 

Though  Mr.  Alden' s  version  of  the  origin  of 
this  exclamatory  expression  appears  probable 
enough,  some  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott  may  trump  up  a  story  equally  plausible  to 
show  that  "the  Wizard  of  the  North"  was  the 
inspiration  of  it.  A  great  many  of  our  slang 
words  undergo  changes  among  the  costers  after 
they  reach  London.  Such  Londonese  as  "  Urry 
lydy,  don't  tike  all  dye,"  "  I'm  not  in  that 
clawss,"  etc.,  seems  like  a  patois  to  unaccustomed 


SLANG.  177 

American  ears.  Into  the  talk  of  the  day  creep 
many  terms  and  phrases  that  are  first  familiar  to 
the  stage,  the  prize-ring,  the  race-course,  etc.  A 
complete  glossary  of  these  graphic  expressions 
would  require  a  large  volume.  In  fact,  divers 
dictionaries  of  slang  have  been  published  from 
time  to  time. 

The  gibberish  of  thieves  is  so  extensive  as  to 
be  almost  a  language  in  itself.  Only  among 
themselves  and  by  policemen  who  are  forced  to 
acquire  the  knowledge  of  its  meaning  is  it  under- 
stood. Many  of  the  terms  that  have  been  in  use 
for  years  had  their  origin  among  the  "fences" 
or  depots  for  the  reception  of  stolen  goods  in 
London,  and  are  really  corruptions  from  the 
Hebrew.  This  jargon,  while  continued  for  years, 
has  never  obtained  outside  of  the  police  and  the 
criminal  classes.  The  terms  used  by  English 
thieves  differ  in  many  respects  from  those  in  use 
among  American  rogues.   Here  are  some  of  them : 

"  A  nark  "  is  a  police  spy. 

"  A  toygetter  "  is  a  burglar. 

"A  broadsman"  is  a  watch  stealer. 

"A  snide-pitcher"  is  a  card  sharp. 

"A  man  at  the  duff"  is  an  utterer  of  false 
money. 

"A  skittle  sharp"  is  a  passer  of  false  jewelry. 

"The  chat"  is  a  house. 

"The  wedge"  is  silver. 

"The  kipsy"  is  a  basket  to  hold  the  loot. 

"Piping  the  reeler  round  the  double"  is  seeing 
the  policeman  at  the  corner. 
12 


178  WORD-COINAGE. 

The  vernacular  of  the  chase  and  of  the  open 
season,  as  used  in  England,  was  invented  by 
sportsmen  evidently  of  picturesque  minds,  and  in 
the  main  is  both  sensible  and  appropriate.  Some 
of  the  mighty  St.  Huberts  of  the  United  States 
may  not  be  altogether  familiar  with  this  nomen- 
clature, which  includes: 

A  sleuth  of  bears.  A  cast  of  hawlvs. 

A  troop  of  monkeys.  A  watch  of  nightingales. 

A  skulk  of  foxes.  A  bevy  of  quail. 

A  pride  of  lions.  A  trip  of  dottrel. 

A  gang  of  elk.  A  stand  of  plover. 

A  sounder  of  hogs.  A  building  of  rooks. 

A  siege  of  herons.  A  clattering  of  doughs. 

A  hide  of  pheasants.  A  plump  of  wild  fowl. 

A  whisp  of  snipe.  A  brood  of  grouse. 

A  muster  of  peacocks.  A  covey  of  partridges,  etc. 

The  political  slang  word  "Gerrymander,"  which 
originated  in  Boston  in  the  spring  of  1812,  com- 
pactly expresses  what  otherwise  would  require 
several  sentences  to  explain.  "Humbug"  was 
once  slang,  but  it  is  so  no  longer.  It  is  not  to  be 
preferred,  however,  to  "deceive,"  nor  is  "bam- 
boozle" to  be  preferred  to  "mislead."  "Rey- 
nakaboo,"  to  express  fraud  or  misrepresentation, 
has  passed  the  slum  stage,  but  it  is  not  the  more 
desirable  because  it  happens  to  get  into  res}>ectable 
newspapers  new  and  then.  "  Mugwump,"  which 
came  into  vogue  during  Cleveland's  first  cam- 
paign for  President,  is  now  good  American,  for  the 
reason  that  it  means  something  that  no  other  word 


SLANG.  179 

expresses,  and  that  is  the  test  of  good  shing.  It 
is  the  survival  of  the  fittest.  It  will  be  in  every 
dictionary  in  the  year  1950,  just  as  the  good  slang 
of  fifty  years  ago  is  in  the  lexicons  of  to-day. 

An  English  literary  journal  of  high  standing 
points  out  that  Stevenson's  peculiar  phrases — and 
it  must  be  admitted  that  some  of  them  are  pecu- 
liar— will  be  far  less  likely  to  jar  upon  the  ears  of 
posterity  than  upon  ours.  "  Only  the  other  day 
some  of  our  correspondents  traced  back  the  word 
'  brick,'  used  as  a  term  of  endearment  to  Aristotle 
and  Plato,  and  in  another  fifty  years  critics  may 
trace  l)ack  Stevenson's  expression,  '  ]\Ierivale  is  a 
howling  cheese'  to  Juvenal  and  Catullus." 

"  Hobos,"  now  the  common  name  for  tramps,  is 
said  to  be  a  Southern  corruption  of  hoe  boys,  and 
originally  was  applied  to  itinerant  laborers  who 
came  to  the  South  during  the  cotton  season. 

A  local  word  in  New  York,  "  pantata,"  mean- 
ing the  old  man  or  the  man  in  authority,  had 
some  vogue  six  or  seven  years  ago,  but  it  did  not 
get  into  general  circulation,  probably  because  it 
partook  more  of  the  nature  of  a  "  gag  "  than  of 
slang. 

In  the  sentence,  "Get  on  to  the  shirt-waist 
man,  if  you  want  to  see  something  out  of  sight," 
are  two  slang  phrases,  the  latter  of  which,  already 
referred  to,  is  one  of  those  anachronisms  that 
imply  a  meaning  just  the  reverse  of  the  declara- 
tion. One  of  the  most  popular  and  common 
phrases  of  the  day,  it  is  a  synonym  for  the  super- 
lative in  appearance,  performance,  or  accomplish- 


180  WORD-COINAGE. 

ment.  It  was  the  balloon  soaring  skyward  that 
was  first  declared  out  of  sight,  and  then  came  the 
adaptation  of  this  new  form  of  expressing  altitude 
and  exemption  from  competition. 

"Isn't  in  it"  is  a  term  borrowed  from  the  turf. 
The  race-track  has  also  given  us  "cinch,"  as 
meaning  something  settled  beyond  all  doubt  or 
peradventure.  A  cinch  is  a  saddle  girth,  tight- 
ened by  the  Spanish  method  of  a  complicated  knot 
that  will  not  come  untied.  Hence  cinch,  or  sure 
thing,  cinched,  or  all  settled  beforehand — can't 
lose. 

As  applying  to  mental  delinquency,  "  off  his 
base"  came  from  the  base-ball  field.  Of  doul:)t- 
ful  origin  is  the  phrase  "  wheels  in  his  head,"  de- 
scriptive of  a  man  with  cranky  notions,  later  con- 
verted into  "  he  has  a  Ferris  "  (suggested  by  the 
big  Ferris  wheel  at  the  Chicago  World's  Fair), 
implying  that  the  person  under  discussion  has  a 
very  decided  delusion.  These  phrases  gave  way 
to  the  more  popular  one,  "  off  his  trolley,"  which 
very  terse  and  descriptive  term  comes,  of  course, 
from  the  street-car  world. 

"  Switched,"  with  the  meaning  of  diverted,  came 
from  the  railroad  yards  ;  also  "side-tracked,"  mean- 
ing temporary  foilure  or  suspension,  the  result  of  out- 
side interference  ;  "  ditched,"  as  expressing  ruin 
and  collapse  ;  and  "  wide  open,"  referring  to  the 
throttle  of  the  locomotive  and  the  extreme  of 
speed,  although  it  has  since  come  to  mean  in  full 
swing,  reckless,  and  regardless  of  interference, 
frequently  applied    to    the    former    condition    of 


SLANG.  181 

things  in  New  York.  In  this  connection  the  Kew 
York  World  coined  the  word  ivideopenness  in  a 
leading  article  not  long  ago. 
(From  the  mining  camps  of  the  far  West  have 
come  many  terms.  ^lark  Twain  once  said  :  "  The 
slang  of  Nevada  is  the  richest  and  most  infinitely 
varied  and  copious  that  has  ever  existed  any- 
where in  the  world,  perhaps,  except  in  the  mines 
of  California  in  the  early  days.  It  was  hard  to 
preach  a  sermon  without  it  and  be  understoocCy 

Among  these  terms  may  be  mentioned :  "Struck 
it  rich,"  which  now  applies  to  any  human  suc- 
cess;  " up  the  flume,"  signifying  failure;  "hard 
pan,"  meaning  a  solid  paying  basis ;  "  petered 
out,"  which  suggests  a  gradual  decline  and  final 
suspension  of  resources;  "grubstake" — that  is, 
assistance  given  a  new  business  enterprise  on 
condition  of  a  share  in  prospective  or  possible 
profits.  For  thirty  years  bonanza  has  been  a 
good  American  word,  and  the  Century  Diction- 
ary accepted  it  along  with  such  words  as  "  boom," 
meaning  to  manufacture  support  and  enthusi- 
asm, and  "squeal,"  meaning  to  confess  and  be- 
tray companions,  synonymous  with  the  English 
"  peach."  And  that  reminds  me  of  the  phrase, 
"  He  had  a  narrow  squeak,"  meaning  escape ; 
also  of  "  He's  N.  G." — that  is,  no  good,  said  of 
a  worthless  fellow.  The  term  "fat,"  now  in  gen- 
eral use,  as  indicative  of  something  of  maximum 
remuneration  for  minimum  exertion,  sprang  from 
the  composing-rooms  of  the  newspaper. 

Circus  slang  was  the  forerunner  of  the  argot 


182  WORD-COINAGE. 

of  the  variety,  uovv  called  the  vaudeville,  stage ; 
for  the  circus  folk  had  a  language  of  their  own  in 
the  good  old  days  wheu  "  the  gas-lit  city  of  tents" 
was  planted  upou  the  village  green.  The  names 
of  various  parts  of  the  tent  and  equipment  sup- 
plied the  roots  of  this  vernacular.  The  boss  of 
the  show  was  called  "the  main  guy."  This 
expression,  to  a  certain  extent,  has  survived  the 
decline  of  the  circus,  and  "the  main  guy"  is 
still  heard  in  the  workshops.  We  also  hear  a 
peculiar  man  spoken  of  as  a  "  queer  guy."  Almost 
unintelligible  are  the  conversation  and  "shop 
talk"  of  acrobats,  sketch  teams,  seriocomics,  soug- 
aud-dance  men,  and  the  lower  order  of  Thes- 
pians. For  instance,  struck  by  the  similarity  of 
the  words  pardon  and  pudding,  some  knockabout 
artist  conceived  the  expression  "I  beg  your 
tapioca,"  but  there  is  no  danger  that  in  the  polite 
world  it  will  ever  supersede  "I  beg  vour  par- 
don." 

Actors  bring  into  existence  many  of  these  short- 
lived, but  more  or  less  expressive,  phrases.  "  The 
ghost  walks  "  is  one  of  the  few  instances  of  the  par- 
lance of  stageland  that  has  survived  the  years  and 
become  general.  ]Many  years  ago  an  actor  cast 
for  the  ghost  in  Hamlet  refused  to  go  on  with  his 
part  until  his  demands  for  a  portion  of  long- 
delayed  salary  were  acceded  to.  He  was  paid 
and  went  on;  "the  ghost  walked,"  and  gradually 
thereafter  the  phrase  was  adopted  as  expressive 
of  the  payment  of  actors'  salaries.  And  to-day 
it   is    among   the    most    frequent    and    common 


SLANG.  183 

things  heard  said  by  the  histrionic  loungers  on 
the  Rialto.  ''  An  angel "  is  a  man  who  inno- 
cently backs  unprofitable  or  question alJe  enter- 
prises to  the  profit  of  the  promoters  solely.  It  is 
a  term  of  contempt.  Many  "  an  angel "  is  vic- 
timized in  theatrical  speculation.  The  continuous 
performance,  instituted  by  B.  F.  Keith  in  1885, 
has  brought  into  the  theatrical  profession  the  word 
chaser — one  who  does  a  turn  or  an  act  at  two  or 
three  places  of  amusement  nightly. 

The  term  "  round  up  "  was  given  to  the  world 
by  the  great  cattle-ranges  of  the  West.  Origi- 
nally it  referred  to  the  annual  gathering  together 
of  the  cattle  of  various  owners  that  they  might 
be  separated  for  shipment.  In  the  business  world 
of  to-day  it  indicates  an  inquiry  into  the  affairs 
of  a  firm  or  corporation,  and  has  really  the  sig- 
nificance of  stock-taking. 

The  lingo  of  every  Jack  Tar  is  salted  with  the 
briny  flavor  of  the  Seven  Seas.  It  would  be 
impossible  to  give  here  more  than  a  few  of  the 
more  characteristic  phrases  derived  from  the  sea. 
First  comes  to  put  things  "  ship  shape,"  then  to 
be  ready  "in  a  brace  of  shakes" — i.  e.,  before 
the  sail  has  flapped  three  times;  to  "kick  up  a 
breeze";  to  "steer  a  middle  course  ";  to  "steer 
clear  "  of  a  man  ;  to  follow  a  thing  to  the  "  bitter 
end  " — that  is,  to  pay  out  cable  until  there  is  no 
more  left  at  the  bitts ;  to  "  tell  it  to  the  marines  "  ; 
to  "go  to  Old  Nick,"  or  St.  Nicholas,  the  patron 
saint  of  sailors  ;  to  "look  out  for  squalls"  ;  to  be 
left  "  high  and  dry  "  ;  to  recognize  a  man  by  the 


184  WORD-COINAGE. 

"  cut  of  his  jib "  ;  to  leave  a  comrade  "  in  the 
lurch";  to  be  "hard  up,"  or  to  "bear  up  for 
Poverty  Bay"  ;  to  be  "half  seas  over,"  used  by 
writers  from  Dean  Swift  downward  as  expressive 
of  too  much  drinking;  to  "run  the  gantlet" 
(properly  gantlope),  once  a  well-known  ordeal  on 
shipboard ;  to  "cut  and  run  "  ;  to  have  a  "snug 
berth  "  ;  to  give  a  man  a  "wide  berth"  ;  to  bring 
a  man  to  his  "bearings"  ;  to  be  "taken  aback" 
— i.  e.,  by  a  sudden  change  of  wind  ;  to  "  keep 
aloof" — i.  e.,  to  keep  your  luff  when  sailing  to 
the  wind,  a  term  in  common  use  on  land,  says  a 
writer  in  Temjjle  Bar,  since  the  days  of  Matthew 
Paris — say  about  the  middle  of  the  thirteenth 
century. 

The  slang  of  a  crowd  at  a  political  meeting  :  A 
man  sings  out,  "  What's  the  matter  with  ^NIcKin- 
ley?"  And  the  assemblage  promptly  answers 
as  with  one  tremendous  voice :  "  He's  all  right ! " 
This  is  conclusive  and  leaves  nothing  more  con- 
vincing to  be  said. 

The  mountaineers  of  Missouri  say  :  "  Stop  your 
glattering" — that  is  chattering ;  whereas  they  say 
in  Wales,  "  What  you  glabbering  about?"  These 
are  provincialisms  which  should  interest  the  phil- 
ologist ;  but  wdiat  I  have  to  say  about  provin- 
ciaj^isms  must  be  reserved  for  the  next  chapter. 
(Much  of  the  slang  quoted  in  the  foregoing 
pa^  is  e^hemeralj  because  it  is  silly,  weak,  and 
far-fetchecTT^The  present  writer  does  not  advise 
any  one  to  memorize  the  stock  speech  of  the  East 
Side.     It  has  been  cited  somewhat  in  extenso  in 


SLANG.  185 

order  that  its  invidious  and  detestable  character — 
and  I  have  avoided  quoting  indecent  specimens — 
might  the  better  substantiate  my  sincere  protest 
ag^jfist  its  use. 

AVhy  does  the  average  school-girl  use  ''awfully 
nice  and  "horribly  ugly"  and  other  superlatives 
so  often  ?  Is  it  because  she  has  a  limited  supply 
of  words  to  select  from  and  must  therefore  repeat 
herselfp  Holding  a  glass  of  water  in  her  hand,  the 
giddy  Frenchwoman  exclaimed:  "If  it  were  only 
wrong  to  drink  this,  how  delicious  it  would  be ! " 
In  some  such  spirit  of  mischief  many  presumably 
refined  society  women  use  outre  expressions  and 
slang.  It  was  said  that  the  color  of  the  rose  came 
from  the  blood  of  Venus,  who  pricked  her  foot  on 
a  thorn.  Xo  such  pretty  conceit  could  be  con- 
trived to  account  for  the  drab  and  purple  talk  of 
some  of  our  bachelor  girls.  Think  you  such  crass 
phrases  as  "I  guess  you're  not  so  much,"  "She 
has  a  bat  in  her  belfry,"  "  Wouldn't  that  rattle 
your  slats?"  gain  any  elegance  or  refinement  of 
meaning  by  being  spoken  through  the  lips  of 
a  beautiful  woman  ?  Indeed,  would  not  such  talk 
go  far  to  rob  her  of  her  personal  charms  ?  Yes,  I 
believe  that  superficial  culture  and  meager  vocab- 
ularies among  American  women  (Boston  blue 
stockings  excepted)  explain  in  a  large  measure 
the  unhappy  choice  of  their  words,  but  they  should 
not  always  accuse  their  brothers,  lovers,  husbands, 
or  their  little  sons  of  having  taught  them  such 
phraseology. 

Do    vou    remember    what    Shenstone    savs? — 


-"■J 


186  WORD-COINAGE. 

**  The  common  fluency  of  speech  in  many  men, 
and  most  women,  is  owing  to  a  scarcity  of  matter 
and  a  scarcity  of  words ;  for  whoever  is  master  of 
a  language,  and  moreover  has  a  mind  full  of 
ideas,  will  be  apt,  in  speaking,  to  hesitate  upon  a 
choice  of  both  ;  but  common  speakers  have  only 
one  set  of  ideas  and  one  set  of  words  to  clothe 
them  in,  and  they  are  ahvays  ready  at  the  mouth. 
Just  so  people  can  come  faster  out  of  a  church 
when  it  is  almost  empty  than  when  a  crowd  is  at 
the  door." 

Emerson  says  of  Montaigne :  "  His  words  are 
vascular — if  you  cut  them,  they  will  bleed." 
If  you  cut  the  words  of  some  people,  you  would 
find  that  those  words  could  claim  no  title  to 
the  Peerage  of  the  English  language.  If  critics 
and  criticasters  of  this  book  protest  that  our 
language  is  adulterated  enough  now  without  sug- 
gesting other  rubbish,  I  answer,  paraphrasing 
from  the  light-hearted  lover  of  Highland  Mary : 

The  rank  is  but  the  guinea's  stamp. 
A  word's  a  word  for  a'  that — 

That  is,  if  it  be  a .  r^al  word  ;  some  so-called 
words  are  not  wordsy^^^If  they  object  to  the  slang 
and  Americanese  iutrocTuced  here,  I  ask  them  if 
they  can  conceive  of  anything  better  calculated  to 
demonstrate  the  inherent  beauty  of  the  English 
language  than  the  perversions  thereof?  Such 
things — college  slang,  for  example — are  the  out- 
growth of  youthful  ebullitions^  of  spirit.  When 
is   the   time   for    a    man    to    sow    his    philologic 


SLANG.  187 

wild  oats  if  it  is  not  when  he  is  an  undergradu- 
ate ?  "  The  glowing  periods  of  the  masters  of  our 
language  seem  even  more  beautiful,"  says  a  writer, 
"when  contrasted  with  the  vulgarisms  of  the 
slangy,  and  if  a  man  can  compress  into  his  four 
undergraduate  years  his  licenses  of  speech,  and 
come  forth  into  the  larger  life  danrj-sore,  so  much 
the  better  for  his  method  of  expressing  his  ideas." 
It  is  to  be  lamented,  however,  that  the  propor- 
tion of  slang  in  the  conversation  of  school-boys 
amounts  to  nearly  one-half  of  the  entire  body  of 
their  speech.  W.  J.  Holland,  LL.  D.,  Chancel- 
lor of  the  Western  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
overheard  the  following  dialogue  between  two 
lads  who  are  fondly  supposed  by  their  parents  to 
be  in  training  at  a  fashionable  pre^oaratory  school 
for  admission  to  one  of  the  leading  colleges  of  the 
country  : 

John — I  say,  Dick,  pawn  me  your  horse  for  half 
an  hour.  I  must  do  a  soak  with  which  Doo- 
licks  has  stuck  me. 

Dick — All  right.  The  old  duffer  gave  me  a 
soak,  too,  the  other  day.  But  don't  keep 
the  ponv  more  than  an  hour.  I  need  it  mv- 
self 

Johti — Say,  that  Haggard  is  a  peach.  I  made 
him  mad  this  morning,  and  he  up  with  his 
blooming  fists  and  came  and  shook  them 
under  my  snoot,  and  told  me  he  would  give 
me  an  agile  stunt. 

Dick — What  did  you  do  ? 


188  WORD-COINAGE. 

John — I  caterpillared. 

Dich — How  did  you  travel  in  your  Latin  this 

morning  ? 
John — Bully  !     I  rowled  and  tore  my  shirt. 
Dick — Good  for  you  ! 

The  subject  of  the  foregoing  conversation  was 
the  temporary  loan  of  an  interlinear  translation 
of  Homer's  Iliad,  familiarly  known  as  a  "  pony," 
though  sometimes  called  a  "horse."  Many  a 
college  youth  rides  through  his  Greek  and  Latin 
recitations  on  a  pony.  "  A  soak  "  appears  to  be 
a  task  imposed  as  a  penalty.  ''An  agile  stunt" 
signifies  a  quick  check — a  sudden  reprimand. 

Kow,  not  until  a  young  man  understands  words 
and  their  proper  uses  will  he  know  their  sources 
in  human  feeling.  When  Horace  Walpole  penned 
his  famous  epigram :  "  Life  is  a  comedy  to  him 
who  thinks  and  a  tragedy  to  him  who  feels "  he 
did  not  characterize  the  impression  of  the  man 
who  does  both.  In  order  to  accomplish  any  think- 
ing that  is  worth  while  one  must  feel,  and  feel 
deeply.  Wherefore  any  sort  of  conscious  feeling 
without  thought  is  impossible.  But  like  many 
another  epigram,  this  one  of  the  eccentric  Mr. 
Walpole's  is  true  only  in  a  limited  sense.  It  is 
strange  how  numerous  are  the  cant  phrases  and 
paradoxes  which  have  caught  and  lingered  in  the 
popular  fancy,  but  which,  on  analysis,  are  found 
to  be  but  a  clever  play  upon  words.  Of  all  the 
proverl^s  and  precious  maxims  that  have  been 
bequeathed  to  this  world  of  ours,  at  least  seven- 


SLANG.  189 

tenths  are  literally  fal<e  and  misleading.  And 
this  recalls  to  mind  Josh  Billings'  bright  saying, 
which  is  wholly  credible,  that  "it  is  better  to  be 
ignorant  than  to  know  so  many  things  that  ain't 
so." 

It  is  certainly  a  great  thing  to  have  a  meto- 
nymic  gift  like  that  of  Bertha  Ruukle,  or  Booth 
Tarkington,  or  the  late  Stephen  Crane,  of  whom 
Hamlin  Garlin  hns  said,  "The  author  had  the 
genius  which  makes  an  old  word  new."  It  is  a 
great  thing,  too,  to  employ  such  a  gift  in  the  right 
direction.  Xone  but  the  heaven-born  poet  may 
bring  out  of  the  vanished,  past  the  forgotten 
word,  and  by  the  divine  alchemy  of  his  art  gal- 
vanize it  and  give  it  life. 

"At  dead  of  night  he  melts  old  joy,  old  truth,   old 

pain, 
Through  his  new  soul,  and  runs  new  forms  of  light ; 
Till  battered  jewels,  dull  and  marred,  reset  again, 
Eeceive  new  luster  to  enchant  our  sight.  "•" 

Beautifully,  indeed,  has  the  Irish  novelist, 
George  ^loore,  described  the  evolution  of  lan- 
guage :  "  In  its  beginning  a  language  is  pure, 
like  spring  water  ;  it  can  be  drunk  from  the  well 
— that  is  to  say,  from  popular  speech.  But  as 
the  spring  trickles  into  a  rivulet  and  then  into  a 
river  it  has  to  be  filteredy^  and  after  long  use  the 
language  has  to  be  filtered,  too.  The  filter  is  the 
personal  taste  of  the  writer.  We  call  the  filter 
^^de.'" 

Qf  people   better    understood    literary   values, 
they  would  be  more  particular  in  their  language^) 


190  WORD-COINAGE. 

r  Slang  is  usually  affected  by  the  laziest  people 
and  by  those  who  have  no  time  or  inclination  to 
think.y  As  to  the  importance  and  immense  satis- 
faction of  word-study  Archbishop  Trench  ob- 
serves :  "  In  words  contemplated  singly,  there  are 
boundless  stores  of  moral  and  historic  truth,  and 
no  less  of  passion  and  imagination  laid  up  . 
I  am  sure,  at  least,  that  for  many  a  young  man 
his  first  discovery  of  the  fact  that  words  are  living 
2)owers,  are  the  vesture — yea,  even  the  body — 
which  thoughts  weave  for  themselves,  has  been 
like  the  dropping  of  scales  from  his  eyes,  like  the 
acquisition  of  another  sense,  or  the  introduction 
into  a  new  world." 

The  great  mass  of  slang,  then,  should  not  be 
encouraged.  If,  at  times,  it  seems  less  formal 
than  dignified  language ;  if  its  saucy  smartness 
seems  to  voice  more  vividly  and  directly  the 
spirit  of  democracy  and  of  bonhomie,  it  neverthe- 
less is  no  more  justifiable  than  rudeness  on  in- 
formal occasions.  "  Observation  teaches,"  wrote 
Noah  Webster,  ''that  languages  must  improve 
and  undergo  great  changes  as  knowledge  in- 
creases, and  be  subject  to  continual  alterations 
from  other  causes  incident  to  men  in  society." 
As  a  means  of  expression  and  not  the  essential 
product  of  thought  language  is  ever  fluent,  ever 
iiexile.  Like  a  ship,  it  gathers  verl:)al  barnacles ; 
like  a  beautiful  green  plant,  it  attracts  verbal 
parasites.  These  become  the  harder  to  eradicate 
the  longer  they  are  allowed  to  take  root  and 
thrive. 


SLANG.  191 

jN^^"*^     ^lang  is  the  scum  of  language,  and  is  likely  to 
w^^^'^    generate  literary  miasmas  .perilous,  if  not  fatal, 


to  the  health  and  vitality  of  that  languajrej  It 
possesses  low  minds  completely  and  ever  threatens 
to  invade  the  realm  of  letters  like  a  plague. 
Nothing  is  too  sacred  for  its  mockery.  The  most 
vapid  gaucheries  of  thought  will  find  somewhere 
admirers  among  the  morbid  and  neurotic.  To 
he  glib  in  slang  exclamations  and  phrases  is  con- 
sidered by  some  persons  as  tantamount  to  inherent 
cleverness.  Intellectual  stupidity  thus  masquer- 
ades in  the  shoddy  plumes  of  a  sham  vocabulary. 
^The  English  language  has  now — in  fact,  some 
time  ago — reached  a  stage  of  conscious  construc- 
tion, not  only  of  words  for  new  inventions  and 
discoveries,  but  of  grammatic  forms,  of  substitute 
words  and  phrases,  and  of  the  forms  for  recog- 
nized deficiencies.  It  is  a  dangerous  and  critical 
period  just  now  for  the  English  language.  And 
it  is  every  cultured  and  intelligent  person's  duty 
to  oppose  any  and  all  changes  or  innovations 
which  will  tend  to  deteriorate  or  taint,  in  the 
slightest  deo-ree,  our  magnificent  and  immortal 
mother  tongu^rs. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE. 

I  AM  almost  tempted  to  say  that  by  provin- 
cialisms I  mean  Americanisms  that  may  be  related 
to  Briticisms  or  to  idioms  of  other  languages  ; 
and  that  by  Americanese  I  mean  the  unique  and 
curious  words  that  have  sprung  up  in  the  United 
States  and  are  not  cognate  to  any  form  of  dialect 
or  provincialism — pan-American  words,  if  you 
please.  Yet  I  perceive  how  hard  it  would  be  to 
keep  to  so  arbitrary  a  distinction,  and  I  shall  not 
insist  upon  it,  except  for  convenience. 

Americanese  often  inspires  doubt  as  to  its  legit- 
imacy. Indeed,  it  may  knock  about,  frankly 
discredited  for  the  higher  literary  purposes,  but 
tolerated  and  even  petted  by  the  average  user. 

It  is  a  fairly  safe  rule  that  where  you  find  the 
most  ignorance  you  will  find  the  most  distinctive 
dialect,  and  where  you  go  among  people  who  are 
rough  and  degenerate,  but  with  a  certain  kind 
of  smartness  and  low  cunning,  you  will  hear  the 
most  slang. 

Many  so-called  provincialisms  have  ceased  to 
be  provincial,  so  effective  has  been  the  fusing 
process  of  dialect  words  and  phrases,  and  so  gen- 

192 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.     193 

eral  the  distribution  of  colloquialisms.  Nor  is  it 
always  right  to  call  them  Americanisms,  so  far  as 
their  etymology  is  concerned ;  for  in  apparently 
strange,  though  I  think  accountable,  ways  dialect 
words  from  remote  peoples  steal  into  our  folk- 
speech.  For  all  we  know  to  the  contrary,  the 
Wild  Man  of  Borneo,  w^ho  was  exhibited  in  this 
country  years  ago  by  Mr.  Barnum,  may  have 
left  a  souvenir  or  two  of  his  native  speech,  which 
we  may  hear  often  without  knowing  its  origin. 

A  broad-minded  writer  tells  us  that  "  in  the 
pursuit  of  words  and  phrases,  of  local  idioms  and 
honest  Americanisms,  the  one  thing  to  avoid  is 
dogma,  and  the  one  thing  to  attend  to,  besides 
authentic  quotations,  is  chronology.  A  diction- 
ary of  words  should  resemble  a  biographic  cyclo- 
pedia— the  closer,  the  better.  And  next  to 
chronology,  an  American  dictionary  of  American 
terms  should  report  environment,  locality,  topog- 
raphy. It  is  wholly  impossible  that-Montana  ^»4 — - 
Boston  talk  exactly  alike^' 

The  sectional  peculiarities  of  our  speech,  how- 
ever, are  daily  diminishing.  Fifty  years  ago  there 
was  a  far  more  marked  geographic  distribution 
of  intelligence  in  the  United  States  than  there  is 
to-day,  and  a  corresponding  variety  of  colloqui- 
alisms, each  more  or  less  peculiar  to  a  certain 
section  of  the  country.  But  the  uniform  diffu- 
sion of  the  means  of  education,  our  methods  of 
rapid  communication,  our  newspapers,  our  shift- 
ing population — all  these  have  combined  to  make 
known  everywhere  the  forms  of  expression  once 
13 


194  WORD-COINAGE. 

exclusively  local.  Couseqiieiitly,  in  nothing  is 
the  student  of  provincialisms  so  liable  to  error 
as  in  assigning  geographic  limits  to  a  word  or 
phrase. 

The  fact  is,  our  local  dialects,  as  well  as  the 
local  English  dialects  from  which  we  get  many 
of  our  folk-words  and  phrases,  are  pretty  thor- 
oughly mixed.  Certain  usages,  however,  cling 
to  certain  communities  and  gain  no  wide-spread 
currency.  Of  these  more  particularly  mention 
will  be  made  here.  Professor  George  Hempl, 
of  the  University  of  Michigan,  President  of  the 
American  Dialect  Society,  recently  read  an  inter- 
esting paper  on  how  people  talk  to  the  cows  in 
different  parts  of  the  country — "co'  boss,"  "co' 
mully,"  "sook  cow,"  and  "come  wench"  being 
the  most  common  calls. 

In  rural  Kew  York  the  word  "orts" — the 
stubbly  ends  of  hay  which  a  fastidious  horse 
leaves  uneaten  in  his  manger — is  in  common  use. 
Some  one  of  bucolic  simplicity  insists  that  ''  eat 
up  your  orts "  would  be  a  natural  reproof  to  a 
child  at  table. 

"Stillyurds,"  with  which  housewives  weighed 
their  mince-meat  is  one  of  the  old  farm  words. 
"Tow,"  a  contemptuous  or  emphatic  form  of 
"Oh,  no,"  is  still  in  use;  also  "dah"  for  no. 
"  M'm-h'm  "  and  "  uh-huh  "  for  yes  are  heard 
all  over  the  land.  "'Sh-h"  or  "Ssh,"  a  sibilant 
request  or  command  to  hush,  to  keep  quiet, 
belongs  to  no  dialect  district :  it  is  common  from 
one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other,  as  well  as 


PROVINCIALISMS    AXD    AMERICAXESE.     195 

in  all  parts  of  the  world.  The  word  "chunies," 
used  aifectiouately  of  little  children,  is  sometimes 
heard  in  the  North,  but  seldom  seen  in  print. 
The  folk-speech  of  rural  New  York  and  that  of 
New  England  have  points  of  dissimilarity,  but 
they  are  not  so  notable  as  they  once  were.  The 
proyincial  word  "resky,"  heard  in  New  Eng- 
land, is  doubtless  a  folk  adaptation  of  the  French 
Canadians'  "  risque,"  which  has  the  same  mean- 
ing. 

Queer  words  may  be  said  to  run  in  families, 
and  nearly  eyery  person  employs  some  novel 
epithet  which  has  no  etymology.  The  remark 
of  a  certain  old  gentleman  I  know,  when  he  is 
playing  cards,  is  "let  her  squill,"  which  his  asso- 
ciates have  come  to  understand  means,  "throw 
your  card."  His  married  daughter  was  once  in 
the  habit  of  saying,  in  school-girl  style,  "  Well, 
I'll  be  everlastingly  dinked."  I  asked  her  one 
day  what  she  meant  by  it.  She  said  she  meant 
that  she  would  be  beaten  in  the  game  of  pedro  we 
were  playing.  So  I  suppose  that  to  be  "  dinked  " 
is  to  be  defeated. 

An  old  farmer  in  the  Catskills  came  to  a  vil- 
lage merchant  and  said  :   "  Mr.  M ,  I  want  to 

borrow  some  money,  but  I  ain't  in  no  damn  strut 
about  it " — meaning  he  wasn't  in  a  great  hurry. 
Here  was  an  instance  of  sematics  which  I  think 
was  original  with  the  man  from  Dry  Brook. 

Dr.  Edward  Caird  says  :  "  The  use  of  an  idea 
by  any  writer  is  by  no  means  always  limited  by 
his  own  interpretation  of  it."     This  being  true  of 


196  WORD-COINAGE. 

words  as  well,  the  accumulation  of  many  meanings 
to  a  term  is  the  result.  Professor  Breal  calls  this 
phenomenon  of  multiplication  polysemia  (from 
TTo/o?,  " numerous,"  and  o-ry/jtefov,  "signification"), 
and  this  tendency  is  illustrated  in  dialect  as  well 
as  in  literary  words.  For  instance,  dingbat  seems 
to  haye  had  an  eyentful  career.  According  to 
one  authority,  ''it  started  as  a  ball  of  dirt  on  the 
legs  of  sheep  in  Vermont,  became  a  smart  spank 
to  the  Northern  Nevy  Englander,  a  squabble,  a 
flying  missile,  and  money  to  the  Maine  lumber- 
man, the  biscuit  of  the  New  England  boarding- 
school,  while  in  Georgia  it  has  turned  to  a  mother's 
kiss,  and  you  may  there  say  of  the  girl  you  ad- 
mire, 'She  is  a  regular  dingbat'  " 

This  is  among  the  strange  words  and  usages 
collected  by  the  American  Dialect  Society.  A 
New  York  newspa}5er  amusingly  cites  other  finds 
of  this  society.  "  We  are  told  that  on  entering 
the  house  the  Ithacan  hangs  up  his  shock,  his  hat 
and  coat ;  the  Otsego  thief  when  caught  looks 
meechincj  or  guilty,  eyen  when  he  has  stolen  a 
mere  smitch,  a  yery  small  quantity."  In  the 
central  part  of  the  Empire  State  "sloughy  is  lop- 
lolly,  sticky  is  tacky,  you  are  bushed  when  you  are 
tired,  you  cJiam/e  q^when  you  moye,  you  go  large 
when  you  are  extrayagant,  you  pronounce  hoax 
as  a  dissyllable,  you  pooster  about  when  you  are 
fussy,  you  are  in  a  yang  when  in  a  hurry,  and 
when  violent  you  do  things  kabang,  kachunck,  ka- 
flop,  kaslamy 

But  this  is  not  all  ;   our  rulers  up  the  State 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.      197 

are  said  to  express  their  amazement  by  such  eu- 
phemisms as  "Geeswax  Christmas,"  and  "I'll  be 
dingswizzled  and  hornswaggled."  "  On  Staten 
Island  splendid  is  (jalloptious,  titbits  are  manave- 
lins,  and  to  turn  is  to  tarve.  Patchogue  says 
noink  and  sidnk  for  nothing  and  something.  In 
the  northwestern  part  of  the  State,  when  two 
young  hearts  begin  to  beat  as  one  they  are  said  to 
be  scamuljugated.  The  farmers  of  Orange  and 
Sulliyan  Counties  haye  the  reprehensible  practice 
of  making  their  maple  syrup  by  melting  the  sugar ; 
this  they  call  alamagoozilum.'^ 

As  for  the  metropolis,  we  learn  that  in  fash- 
ionable boarding-houses  we  may  be  requested  to 
trun  the  butter;  that  the  watermen  say  that  a 
schooner  is  tuung  out  when  she  sails  wing  and 
wing,  that  drug  for  drew  and  scrojje  for  scraped 
may  he  heard  among  New  Yorkers. 

In  the  Tennessee  mountains  sugar  is  sweeten- 
ing, but  molasses  is  long  sweetening  ;  a  man  sub- 
ject to  fits  is  fitified,  and  his  past  tenses  are  fotch 
and  holp  and  seed  and  squez  and  swole.  Down 
there  yery  much  is  a  heap  sight,  or  a  good  few, 
or  some  several,  or  way  yander. 

"  The  sty-baked  or  stay-at-home  Jersey  matron 
coosters  or  potters  around  the  house,  calls  her 
preserves  do-ups,  pork  spak  f perhaps  derived 
from  the  German  Speek),  her  husband,  if  need 
be,  a  lobscouse  or  lojyer,  meaning  a  worthless 
fellow." 

Some  typical  words  come  from  the  shores  of 
Newfoundland,  where  lolly  is  the  ice  and  snow  in 


198  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  water  near  the  shore,  soft  snow  is  sloh,  a  hole 
in  the  ice  is  a  swatch.  A  fisherman  is  just 
scrammed  when  he  is  thoroughly  chilled.  He 
calls  a  sleet  storm  a  silver  thaw,  and  the  sound 
of  the  waves  breaking  on  the  shore  is  rote.  "  His 
improperly  baked  bread  is  dunch,  ih^  material  for 
his  fish  balls  is  Jiuggernum  biiff,^  unfair  behavior 
is  hunker  sliding,  and  a  quid  of  tobacco  is  old  sojer. 
He  calls  fish  that  is  not  sorted  tolqual,  which  is 
the  French  tel  quel,  as  the  Maine  backwoodsman's 
compromjjo  for  a  Frenchman  is  comprend  pas,  and 
the  Gloucester  fisherman's  matross  for  a  sailor  is 
the  German  Matrose. 

"Coof  is,  the  name  for  an  off-islander  in  Nan- 
tucket ;  on  Mount  Desert  the  summer  visitor  is  a 
rusticrata;  a  stupid  Vermonter  is  a  dodunk ;  sl 
goober  grubber  digs  peanuts  in  Tennessee.  AVhen 
a  man  is  confused,  he  is  mommixed  in  Kentucky, 
he  is  muxed  up  in  Otsego  County  (N.  Y.),  gal- 
leyied  in  New  Bedford,  stodged  in  Indiana,  and 
wuzzled  in  Central  New  York.  'I  don't  hurt  for 
it '  means  '  I  don't  care '  in  Mississippi,  while  '  I 
don't  mind  it  a  bit '  implies  terror  in  North  Caro- 
lina, where  a  great  calamity  is  scandalous.  The 
sunset  is  day-down  on  the  Virginia  coast.  A  man 
has  large  money  in  Cincinnati,  he  has  scuds  of  it 
in  Missouri,  and  a  session  of  it  in  Georgia.  When 
a  Terre  Haute  citizen  is  sullen  he  isputchiky,  and 

^The  Philadelphians  eat  what  they  call  ''scrapple," 
which  is  made  of  pork  and  Indian  meal  or  hominy, 
boiled  together  and  cooled  in  a  dish.  When  wanted  for 
use,  it  is  cut  in  slices  and  fried,  much  as  hominy  is. 


PROVINX'IALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE,     199 

if  too  weak  to  get  out  of  bed,  is  on  the  lift,  while 
a  pawky  Ohioan  is  oue  in  poor  health,  and  a  men- 
tally weak  Kentuckian  is  slack  tivided.  Hogo  is 
a  strong  smell  in  New  Hampshire,  where  a  severe 
storm  is  a  tan  toaster.  Missouri  slush  is  sposh. 
Green  corn  remains  roasfn  ear  in  Florida,  even 
when  it  is  canned,  and  there  a  cow  may  give  birth 
to  a  yearling." 

Professor  Richard  Burton  says:  "Study  the 
freshest,  most  flavorous  American  idiom,'  and 
where  is  its  source?  In  the  West,  three  times 
out  of  four."  This  is  largely  true,  no  doubt, 
but  we  should  bear  in  mind  that  many  of  these 
so-called  Western  idioms  are  merely  transplanted 
exotics.  There  is  a  popular  notion  that  the  old 
question,  "  Who's  hyer  ? "  gave  the  name  to  the 
Hoosier  State^  but  this  is  more  than  improbable. 
The  term  Hoosier  is  not  indigenous  to  Indiana,  if, 
as  is  claimed,  it  was  taken  there  by  early  settlers 
from  North  Carolina  mountains,  where  an  uncouth 
person  was  once,  and  perhaps  still  is,  called  a 
Hoosier. 

It  is  well  known  that  no  small  portion  of  Indi- 
ana was  settled  ]:)y  North  Carolinians,  and  what  is 
more  likely  than  that  they  brought  the  term  with 
them  ?  As  a  localism  Hoosier,  of  course,  has  lost 
its  Carolina  meaning,  though  Indiana  is  still  the 
Hoosier  State.  Jesse  S.  Reeves,  of  Richmond, 
Ind.,  has  found  the  name  in  print  as  early  as 
1836,  and  in  writing  about  ten  years  earlier.     In 

^  Farmer's  Americanisms  Old  and  Neio  is  an  excellent 
reference  book. 


200  WORD-COINAGE. 

the  northern  part  of  the  State  the  folk-speech 
differs  somewhat  from  that  of  the  southern.  A 
strong  Yankee  twang  is  heard  in  the  north,  which 
was  settled  mainly  by  people  from  northern  Ohio, 
Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and  New  England ; 
while  in  the  south  the  pioneers  came  chiefly  from 
the  Carolinas,  Kentucky,  Tennessee,  Virginia, 
Maryland,  and  southern  Ohio.  Hence  the  dialect 
of  this  region  is  marked  by  the  southern  influence, 
and  has  some  features  of  resemblance  to  the  negro 
and  the  "  poor  white"  or  cracker  dialect.  Rarely 
met  with  further  north,  the  expression  "right 
smart "  is  used  generally  in  central  and  southern 
Indiana. 

But  exact  geographic  bounds  cannot  be  given 
to  the  Hoosier  dialect ;  for  it  extends  beyond  the 
state  lines  into  Ohio,  Kentucky,  Illinois,  and 
Michigan,  gradually  becoming  modified  and 
shading  off*  into  other  colloquialisms.  Of  course, 
other  folk-speech  extends  into  Indiana  in  much 
the  same  way.  Hoosiers  who  have  migrated  to 
States  farther  west  probably  speak  their  dialect  in 
almost  its  original  form  ;  while  expressions  osten- 
sibly of  Hoosier  liirth  have  been  scattered  broad- 
cast over  the  country. 

The  word  "tote"  is  a  part  of  Hoosier  dialect, 
yet  it  did  not  originate  in  Indiana.  Most  persons 
probably  would  associate  it  with  the  negro,  who 
uses  the  word  freely  in  dialect  stories.  As  early 
as  1677  the  word  was  used  in  Virginia,  where 
there  were  four  times  as  many  white  bond-ser- 
vants at  that  time   as  there   were   negroes.     In 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.     201 

Maine,  where  negroes  were  unknown,  there  are 
old  post-roads  that  went  by  the  name  of  "tote 
roads."  Moreover,  the  word  was  a  common  one 
in  England  during  the  seventeenth  century.  It 
scarcely  can  be  of  African  origin  then,  nor  is  it 
used  exclusively  by  the  negroes. 

Though  often  met  with  in  Hoosier  dialect,  the 
word  "cantankerous"  is  not  confined  to  the 
bounds  of  Indiana.  It  is  certified  by  the  usage 
of  no  less  a  writer  than  Thackeray,  who  speaks  of 
a  "cantankerous  humor,"  cited  in  Webster.  In 
her  story.  The  Casting  Vote,  Miss  Murfree  (Charles 
Egbert  Craddock)  puts  into  the  mouth  of  the  coro- 
ner the  sentence :  "  He's  ez  hard-headed,  an'  ty- 
rannical, an'  perverse,  an'  cantankerous  a  critter 
ez  ever  lived."  Even  Chaucer,  of  whom  Spenser 
sang  as  the  "well  of  English  uudefyled,"  makes 
use  of  the  word  "conteke,"  from  which  "cantan- 
kerous" probably  is  derived. 

The  word  "ord'nary,"  a  variation  of  ordinary, 
and  meaning  common,  mean,  low  down,  is  used 
in  Indiana,  but  so  it  is  elsewhere.  A  word  often 
heard  is  "mosey" — in  such  expressions  as,  "He 
moseyed  off  down  the  creek."  It  seems  to  have 
the  Hoosier  stamp.  In  central  Indiana,  at  least, 
it  means  to  saunter  along,  to  walk  slowly  and 
aimlessly,  and  is  rarely  or  never  used  in  the  sense 
given  by  the  dictionaries,  which  is  to  move  ofi" 
quickly,  to  get  out,  to  light  out,  to  hustle. 
Equally  erroneous  are  most  accounts  of  its 
derivation.  One  author  tells  a  story  of  a  de- 
faulting postmaster  named   Moses,  who    left   be- 


202  WORr>-COINAGE. 

tween  two  days,  and  iu  this  account  the  word  is 
absurdly  connected  with  the  name  and  manner  of 
flight.  Possibly  the  word  comes  from  the  Spanish 
imperative  verb  vamos,  "go" — L  e.,  it  may  be  a 
variant  of  "vamoose,"  which  is  so  derived,  and 
wdiich  has  some  of  the  meanings  ascribed  to 
"mosey." 

The  elliptic  phrases  "wants  out"  and  "wants 
iu,"  iu  such  sentences  as  "the  dog  wants  out," 
that  is,  "wants  to  go  out,"  have  been  pointed  out 
as  peculiar  to  Indiana,  but  similar  phrases — e.  (j., 
"the  hired  man  wants  off" — are  heard  iu  many 
other  places. 

The  unsigned  writers  of  a  sagacious  article  in 
the  Indianapolis  News  (with  some  of  the  fat  of 
which  these  paragraphs  are  larded)  are  compelled, 
they  say,  "  to  confess,  and  they  take  no  shame  to 
themselves  for  so  doing,  that  iu  spite  of  consider- 
able search,  they  have  been  unable  to  find  a  single 
provincialism  which  they  would  be  willing  to 
assert  is  at  present  confined  to  Indiana  alone." 
In  his  recent  book  on  The  Hoosiers,  Meredith 
Nicholson  expresses  grave  doubts  as  to  the  exist- 
ence of  a  distinct  Hoosier  dialect.  "The  real 
Hoosier,"  he  says,  "who  has  been  little  in  contact 
with  the  people  of  cities,  speaks  a  good  deal  as  his 
Pennsylvania  or  North  Carolina  or  Kentucky 
grandfather  or  great-grandfather  did  before  him, 
and  has  created  nothing  new." 

Probably  some,  if  not  all,  of  the  following  words 
and  phrases  are  more  frequently  used  in  Indi- 
ana than  elsewhere  :     "Heap-sight,"  as  in  "  more 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.      203 

ground  by  a  heap-sight";  "juberous,"  as  in  "I 
felt  mighty  juberoiis  about  crossiu'  the  river"; 
"jamboree,"  in  the  sense  of  a  "  big  time  "  ;  "flab- 
bergasted"— i.  e.,  exhausted;  "gargly" — i.  e., 
awkward;  "I  mind  that,"  for  I  remember  that ; 
"bumfoozled" — i  e.,  "rattled"  ;  "whang-doodle," 
as  in  "Are  you  going  to  the  whang-doodle  to- 
night?" 

In  short,  the  abbreviations  and  contortions  of 
words,  the  wrong  accent  or  mispronunciation 
rather  than  the  possession  of  expressions  notably 
its  own,  give  individuality  to  the  Hoosier  dialect, 
as  to  most  others.  The  Hoosiers  say  kyounty 
for  county,  and  call  their  State  Injeanny.  They 
make  the  "a"  long-drawn  and  flat,  as  in 
*'sasses,"  "  saft,"  "  pasnips."  They  use  "furder  " 
for  further,  "sheer"  for  share,  "kinder"  or 
"kindy"  for  kind  of,  "kin"  for  can,  "drap"  for 
drop,  "quare"  for  queer,  "fur"  for  far,  "jint " 
for  joint,  "ruinated"  for  rumed,  "tuck"  for 
took,  "biler"  for  boiler,  "sumpin"  for  something, 
"kittle"  for  kettle,  "histed"  for  hoisted,  etc. 

Other  frequent  expressions  are  :  "  thing-a-ma- 
jig."  as  in  "  What  kind  of  a  thing-a-majig  have 
you  got  there?" — "slather,"^  as  in  "He  just 
slathers  away  and  says  anything"  ;  "shenani- 
gan," to  cheat;  "fixin's,"  as  in  "pie  an'  cake,  an' 
chicken,  an'  sich  fixin's";  "hump  your  stumps" 
— i.  e.,  to  make  haste;  "passel,"-  as  in  "They're 

^  In  southern  New  York  i.'i  often  heard  the  sentence  : 
"  He  has  slathers  of  money."' 
^  Also  common  in  some  parts  of  England. 


204  WORD-COINAGE. 

jest  a  passel  o'  fools";  "all-git-out,"  as  iu  "It's 
rainin'  to  beat  all-git-out." 

An  expression  often  used  in  some  localities  in 
Indiana,  and  said  to  be  connected  in  derivation 
with  doxology,  is  "socdolager."  Say  my  ingeni- 
ous authorities:  "The  doxology  comes  near  the 
end  of  a  'meeting,'  and  when  a  man  or  a  boy 
gives  another  a  'socdolager'  (the  similarity  in 
sound  must  be  apparent),  the  end  of  the  fight  is  at 
hand."  The  temperature  of  the  Hoosier  is  repre- 
sented to  be  about  normal,  as  a  rule,  but  when 
his  feelings  are  overwrought  he  resorts  to  a  great 
variety  of  swear  words  and  exclamations,  such  as  : 
"  Jerusalem  crickets,"  "shucks,"  "byjing,"  "by 
cracky,"  "dinged  if  I  don't,"  "jeeminy-crim- 
minny-whiz,"  "gosh  danged,"  "gee  whilliken," 
"by  gravy,"  "by grab,"  "dad  zooks,"  "dad  burn," 
"by  gum,"  "all  fired,"  "I'll  be  clogon'd,"  or 
"dagon'd"  (Barrie  uses  a  similar  form,  "da- 
gont"  in  Sentimental  Tommy),  "for  the  land's 
sakes,"  "great  Scott,"  "  my  goodness,"  "Oh,  my," 
"the  dickens"  (which  means  little  devil,  being  a 
contraction  of  the  old  diminutive  devilkins), 
"laws-a-mercy,"  "plague  take  it,"  etc. 

Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  much  of  what  is  called 
Hoosier  dialect  serves  the  same  purpose  in  many 
other  parts  of  the  country.  Dr.  Weatherly,  of 
the  Indiana  State  University,  in  the  course  of 
some  remarks  pertinent  to  the  subject  of  Hoosier 
dialect  in  literature,  is  reported  as  saying:  "A 
few  months  ago  I  met  a  typical  Hoosier  in  New 
York  city.     He  was  perfectly  natural,  perfectly 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.     205 

individual ;  but  you  will  uot  find  him  in  any  of 
the  books,  for  the  truth  is  no  one  has  yet  suc- 
ceeded in  getting  a  real,  live  Hoosier  into  a  book. 
Eggleston  has  given  us  his  talk,  and  Riley  has 
occasionally  given  us  some  delightful  and  prom- 
ising mirror-like  glimpses,  but  neither  has  quite 
succeeded.  If  we  look  long  enough,  we  see  that 
the  man  himself  is  not  there.  A  certain  indefin- 
able something  is  wanting.  Doubtless  many  per- 
sons have  had  much  the  same  feeling.  Some 
moderately  good  Hoosier  dialect  stories  there  un- 
doubtedly are,  but  the  characters  in  them  have 
too  often  been  either  caricatures  or  else  mere 
automatons." 

Apropos  of  Americanese,  ''jimmermerig  "  and 
"  jiggumbob "  are  heard  now  and  then.  They 
are  sometimes  applied  to  adjuncts  of  a  woman's 
attire  by  men  who  cannot  give  a  more  lucid  descrip- 
tion of  these  sartorial  accessories.  Sometimes 
they  are  applied  to  parts  of  machinery  the  definite 
names  of  which  are  unknown  to  the  observer. 
"Fad"  is  not  Americanese,  but  according  to  the 
Xeiu  English  Dictionary  its  earliest  appearance 
was  in  Hughes's  Life  of  BisJwj?  Frazer,  pub- 
lished in  183-1-.  The  etymology  of  the  word  is 
unknown,  but  its  origin  is  in  current  English 
dialects,  chiefly  Midland. 

Here  is  an  account  of  one  bit  of  Americanese. 
An  American  college  professor  who  was  abroad 
during  the  Civil  War,  returned  at  its  close,  and 
on  the  steamer  bringing  him  home  he  fell  into  a 
controversy  with  an  Englishman  as  to  the  origin 


206  WORD-COINAGE. 

pf  the  word  "skedaddle."  The  professor  de- 
clared that  no  such  word  existed,  and  the  Eng- 
lishman insisted  that  he  had  heard  it  used  con- 
stantly during  his  visit  to  this  country  the  pre- 
vious year.  He  finally  offered  to  bet  a  "jolly  " 
good  dinner  that  he  was  right,  and  the  professor 
promptly  assented.  Several  times  during  the 
remainder  of  the  voyage  each  gentleman  jocularly 
referred  to  the  feast  he  was  sure  he  should  eat  at 
the  other's  expense.  Scarcely  had  the  professor 
landed  when  he  heard  baggage-men  ordering 
their  drivers  to  skedaddle  with  their  loads,  boot- 
blacks asked  him  to  let  them  shine  his  shoes 
before  he  skedaddled  home,  and  the  word  which 
had  sprung  into  existence  in  his  absence  seemed 
to  be  in  everybody's  mouth.  The  professor  paid 
the  wager  with  good  grace,  it  is  said,  and  prob- 
ably thereafter  was  a  still  wiser  man.  After 
trailing  through  the  language  for  a  time  this 
verbal  pyrotechnic  vanished  into  the  limbo  of 
semi-obsolete  words. 

The  English  author  of  Alice  in  Wonderland, 
etc.,  Lewis  Carroll  (Dr.  Dodgson),  was  the  in- 
ventor of  the  "snark"and  the  "jabberwock," 
and  Miss  Caroline  Wetherell  has  given  our 
American  children  those  quaint  "jobbernowls," 
as  she  calls  them.  "Jobbernowl"  is  an  obsolete 
word  of  old  English  origin,  and  means  "  block- 
head." In  the  time  of  Queen  Elizabeth  it  was 
freely  used.  In  an  old  translation  of  Rabelais' 
works  the  word  is  spelled  jobbernol.  It  is  in 
Webster's  and  other  dictionaries.     Miss  AVeth- 


PROVI^XIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.     207 

erell  merely  adopted  the  old  forgotten  term  be- 
cause it  suited  her  purpose.  She  wanted  a  quaint 
word  to  describe  some  characters  in  verses  she 
was  writing  for  the  children's  page  of  the  Ameri- 
can Press  Association.  The  characters  were 
wooden  marionettes,  and,  writes  ]Miss  Wetherell, 
"you  readily  see  'wooden-head,'  'blockhead,' 
and  'jobbernowl '  are  the  same.  The  really  odd 
part  of  it  is  that  no  one  seems  to  know  that  job- 
bernowl is  not  a  new  word,  but  a  very  old  one 
that  of  right  has  a  place  in  the  language." 

Henry  James,  in  one  of  his  stories,  alludes  to 
the  atmosphere  of  an  English  country  house  as 
jumpy.  Grace  Margaret  Gallaher,  in  her  Vassar 
Stories,  speaks  of  a  most  /oathy  frog,  and  says 
that  the  feeling  of  anybody  who  is  a  good  deal 
in  the  house  is  apt  to  be  fubsy.  A  sufferer  from 
the  fubsy  state  should  go  out-doors,  etc.  And 
some  things,  even  at  Vassar,  we  learn  from  Miss 
Gallaher,  are  borey. 

A  bad  ver])al  by-product  is  like  a  son  who  is 
a  failure  in  life,  and  so  I  dislike  to  ''  Boswell " 
this  to  posterity  :  "  He  stood  only  two  skipometers 
from  the  brink  of  the  abyss,"  but  a  dear  friend 
sent  it  to  me  with  the  assurance  that  he  never 
would  do  anything  like  it  again.  Only  as  a  re- 
minder of  his  ghastly  offense  and  of  his  worthy 
resolution  is  it  included.  Another  gentleman, 
who  does  not  wish  his  name  mentioned,  suggests 
quassid,  as  an  adjective,  meaning  shaken,  agitated, 
from  quassare,  to  shake.  Still  another  corre- 
spondent calls  my  attention   to  ksskss,  which  is 


208  WORD-COINAGE. 

smaller  than  least,  and,  he  says,  more  expressive 
than  less.  But  it  is  not  a  word  that  bites  the 
mind,  so  to  speak. 

The  power  of  words  never  impresses  some 
persons.  They  never  feel  as  did  Mrs.  Gilchrist 
when  she  wrote  of  Whitman's  poems :  "  I  had 
not  dreamed  that  words  could  cease  to  be  words 
and  become  electric  streams  like  these."  Such 
persons  are  not  likely  to  appreciate  the  mot  juste 
nor  to  know  what  bit  of  slang  is  de  trop  in  polite 
conversation.  With  them  all  words  are  equal. 
They  know  not  what  words  have  the  cachet  of 
good  literary  usage  nor  what  words  are  under  lit- 
erary ban.  They  do  not  perceive  that  language 
has  an  aura,  like  an  individual. 

There  is  no  ]:)liilologic  sleuthery  cunning  enough 
to  trace  all  the  mysterious  survivals  of  our 
speech,  but  the  day  is  near  when  men  will  know 
much  more  about  the  English  language  than  is 
known  now.  In  volumes  new  and  old,  besides 
reference  books,  there  are  many  examples  of 
Americanese.  In  them,  too,  may  be  found  still- 
born words — seen  in  one  author's  book  and  no- 
where else.  As  has  been  said,  the  illicit  and 
ineligible  words  soon  find  their  way  into  the 
Potter's  Field  of  language — "unwept,  unhonored, 
and  unsung."  Others,  repudiated  by  everybody 
else,  linger  in  the  mind  perhaps  of  him  who  is — ■ 

'Must  at  the  age  'twixt  boy  and  youth, 
When  thought  is  speech,  and  speech  is  truth." 

Some   writers  make   up  Americanese  merely  to 


PROVINCIALISMS    AND    AMERICANESE.     209 

give  a  facetious  turn  to  their  ideas.  Thus  Elbert 
Hubbard :  '"Whoever  saw  au  augel  with  pants?' 
asked  the  quibbling  critic  as  he  stood  before  one 
of  Mr.  Samuel  Warner's  art  creations.  'Who- 
ever saw  an  angel  without  pants  ?'  replied  Sammy, 
and  thus  did  Sammy  place  the  kibosh  upon  the 
astute  visitor." 

James  L.  Ford,  the  inventor  and  sole  patentee 
of  cuhurine,  describes  it  "as  a  substance  that 
bears  the  same  relation  to  culture  that  velveteen 
does  to  velvet,  oleomargarin  to  butter,  or  plush 
to  sealskin.  Like  all  imitations,  it  has  a  distinct 
reason  for  existence,  and  in  a  certain  limited 
sense  may  be  likened  to  a  mixture  of  a  large 
amount  of  cotton  with  a  small  percentage  of  silk, 
the  latter  appearing  on  the  outside  of  the  fabric 
in  the  form  of  a  very  thin  and  very  shiny  gloss. 

"Culturine  may  be  had  in  various  forms,  the 
most  popular  of  which,  perhaps,  are  artine,  ])ros- 
aline,  and  versaletie.  There  are,  of  course,  other 
special  varieties,  but  those  I  have  named  may  be 
obtained  from   almost   any  one   engaged  in    the 

business Artine  is  simply  nothing 

more  nor  less  than  information,  both  accurate  and 
inaccurate,  regarding  modern  and  classic  art,  put 
up  in  small  capsules,  and  sold  in  boxes  contain- 
ing one  dozen  each.'' 

Now  compare  the  foregoing  with  the  following 
masterly  definition  of  Ruskin's,  and  perhaps  we 
shall  see  what  Americanese  is  not:  "What  do 
you  think  the  beautiful  word  'wife'  comes  from? 
It  is  the  great  word  in  which  the  English  and 
14 


210  WORD-COINAGE. 

Latin  languages  conquer  the  French  or  Greek. 
I  hope  the  French  will  some  clay  get  a  word  for 
it  instead  of  their /e7?i77ie.  But  what  do  you  think 
it  comes  from?  The  great  value  of  the  Saxon 
words  is  that  they  mean  something.  'Wife' 
means  weaver.  You  must  be  either  house-wives 
or  house-moths,  remember  that.  In  the  deep  sense 
you  must  either  weave  mens'  fortunes  and  em- 
broider them,  or  feed  upon  them,  and  bring  them 
to  decay.  Wherever  a  true  wife  comes,  home 
is  always  around  her.  The  stars  may  be  over- 
head, the  glow-worm  in  the  night's  cold  grass  may 
be  the  fire  at  her  feet ;  but  home  is  where  she  is, 
and  for  a  noble  woman  it  stretches  far  around 
her  better  than  houses  ceiled  with  cedar  or  painted 
with  vermilion,  shedding  its  quiet  light  for  those 
who  are  homeless.  This,  I  believe,  is  the  woman's 
true  place  and  power." 


CHAPTER   XII. 

SOME    VERBAL    CURIOS. 

Not  long  ago  the  London  Academy  offered 
prizes  for  four  new  words,  and  the  competition 
brought  out  some  amusing  results.  One  of  the 
words  suggested  \\2is penandincompoop,  a  term  for 
a  stupid,  silly  writer.  Another  was  ineompoop — 
an  income-tax  collector.  As  this  word  contains 
a  cockney  pun  it  may  become  popular  among  a 
certain  class.  Still  another  was  snumble,  to  sig- 
nify a  child's  effort  to  express  the  sensation  felt 
in  the  nostrils  when  one  drinks  an  effervescino^ 
mineral  water.  Perhaps  the  most  successful  ex- 
ample was  hluedomer — that  is,  one  who  declines 
to  go  to  church  because  of  his  ability  to  worship 
God  more  easily  under  the  blue  dome  of  heaven. 
The  word  roofer  is  defined  as  a  letter  written 
after  staying  with  a  friend  to  express  your  grati- 
tude for  his  hospitality.  Other  new  words  sub- 
mitted to  the  Academy  were  : 

Crotion — an  occurrence  which  enables  you  "to 
crow"  over  another  person.  It  is  the  noun  cor- 
respondina:  to  Mr.  Kipling's  interjections,  "gloats" 
^and  "fids." 

Balmyanns — originally  "  baby,"  for  Parmesan 

211 


212  WORD-COINAGE. 

biscuits,   and   hence   auy  treasure-trove   between 
meals. 

Gliig — a  greasy  mud  peculiar  to  the  streets  of 
large  cities. 

Gluxy — an  adjective  denoting  the  quality  that 
is  not  quite  oily  or  creamy  or  glutinous,  but  sug- 
gestive of  each. 

Conflumiion — catastrophe. 

Quinnydingles — irrelevancies  and  trivialities. 

Scree! — the  sensation  produced  by  hearing  a 
knife-edge  squeal  on  a  slate. 

Scriuigle — the  noise  made  by  a  slate  pencil 
squeaked  on  a  slate. 

Twink — a  testy  person  full  of  kinks  and  cranks. 

Tilge — decoction  of  tea  which  has  stood  too 
long,  whether  warm  or  cold.  (Evidently  sug- 
gested by  bilge  water,  as  in  the  bottom  of  a  boat.) 

Sinequanonymous — most  essential. 

Whifflement — object  o|  small  importance. 

Flopulent — the  method  of  sitting  or  reclining 
of  one's  adipose  aunt. 

Before  our  late  difficulty  with  Spain  was  ended 
an  enterprising  individual  started  on  a  lecture 
tour,  giving  what  he  barbarously  called  a  war- 
alogue.  The  moving  picture  machine,  according 
to  various  modifications,  has  been  called  the  cine- 
matograph or  kinematograph,  the  mutoscope,  the 
vitascope,  the  hiograph,  etc. 

One  of  the  most  ludicrous  word-coiners  I  ever 
knew  was  an  eccentric  character  who  lived  in  the 
Catskills.  He  died  years  ago.  His  favorit^ 
tipple  was  hard  cider,  and  when  "mellowed"  by 


SOME    VERBAL    CURIOS.  213 

this  insidious  l^everage,  he  was  wout  to  indulge  in 
some  wonderful  monologues.  One  day  he  met 
Doctor  Green,  to  whom  he  said:  "Doc,  I've  got 
a  complaint  you  can't  cure."  "What  is  it?" 
asked  the  unsuspecting  old  physician.  "  Well," 
drawled  "Lon,"  a  cider  leer  in  his  eyes,  "I  was 
taken  last  night  with  the  inflammation  of  the 
dwadlum,  operating  very  extensively  on  the 
crisis  of  the  revenue  of  the  revellee  of  the  incon- 
gongaelix." 

The  doctor  dryly  admitted  that  he  knew  of  no 
remedy  for  that  malady,  and  "  Lon  "  was  so  elated 
at  having  "stumped"  Doctor  Green  that  he  told 
the  incident  on  every  possible  occasion,  now  and 
then  varying  the  jargon  according  to  his  mood. 

Americaphiles  and  Americaphobes  were  intro- 
duced by  Julian  Ealph  in  an  article  published  in 
Hcuyers  Magazine.  They  are  not  happy  expres- 
sions, though  I  notice  that  other  writers  have 
used  them. 

Charles  Reade's  manipulation  of  the  English 
language  was  erratic,  to  say  the  least.  In  Read- 
iana  he  described  a  gentleman  giving  a  luncheon 
to  two  ladies  at  a  railway  restaurant  as  follows  : 
"  He  souped  them,  he  tough-chickened  them,  he 
brandied  and  cochinealed  one,  and  he  brandied 
and  burnt-sugared  the  other"  (brandy  and 
cochineal  and  brandy  and  burnt  sugar  being 
Reade's  euphemisms  for  port  and  sherry  respect- 
ively). In  Christie  Johnson,  anent  the  complex- 
ion of  the  Newhaven  fishwives,  he  says:  "It  is  a 
race  of  women  that  the  Northern  sun  peachifies 


214  WORD-COINAGE. 

instead  of  rosewoodizing."  "  They  showed  napes," 
is  the  way  he  indicated  that  two  persons  in  a  fit 
of  temper  turned  their  backs  on  each  other.  This 
phrase  occurs  in  A  Simpleton. 

Abnormally  long  words  may  be  included  under 
the  heading  of  this  chapter.  Determining  to 
frame  a  word  which  would  be  readily  intelligible 
to  all  who  understand  the  Flemish  language  and 
who  had  never  seen  a  "  horseless  carriage,"  the 
members  of  the  Flemish  Academy  of  Auvers, 
after  much  deep  thought,  evolved  the  following- 
word  :  Snelpaardelooszonderspoorwegpetrolrijtuig. 
This  euphonious  (?)  word  signifies  "a  carriage 
which  is  worked  by  means  of  petroleum,  which 
travels  fast,  which  has  no  horses,  and  which  is  not 
run  on  rails."  A  Xew  York  newspaper,  com- 
menting on  it,  said  :  "  This  is,  from  one  point  of 
view,  a  fine  example  of  mnltum  in  parvo,  but  it 
may  be  questioned  whether  one  extraordinarily 
long  word  is  preferable  to  half  a  dozen  short 
ones.  The  Flemish  people,  however,  think  dif- 
ferently, and  the  Academicians  of  Anvers  have 
been  highly  complimented  by  them  on  their  lin- 
guistic skill  as  seen  in  this  unique  word." 

In  Jeremy  Bentham's  Abridged  Petition  for 
Justice  (1829,  p.  18)  occurs  the  nine-syllabled 
word  disintellectualization.  Jeremy  Bentham 
was  the  man  who  defined  the  whole  of  a  good 
style  to  lie  in  the  choice  of  "  the  same  word  for 
the  same  thing  and  a  different  word  for  a  differ- 
ent thing."     Ehew ! 

A  word  of  twenty-two  letters — viz.,  incircum- 


SOME    VERBAL    CURIOS.  215 

scriptibleness — was  used  by  one  Byfield,  an  Eng- 
lish divine,  in  a  treatise  on  Colossians,  published 
in  1615.  In  the  biography  of  Dr.  Benson  is  an 
entry  from  the  Archbishop's  diary  to  the  effect 
that  "the  Free  Kirk  of  the  Xorth  of  Scotland 
are  strong  antidisestablishmentarians  " — twenty- 
six  letters.  In  keeping  with  his  rather  ponder- 
ous language  in  general  William  E.  Gladstone 
coined  the  word  cUsedablishmentariani.sm.  Re- 
ferring to  Love's  Labor's  Lost  (act  v.,  sc.  i.  1.  44; 
we  find :  Costard — "  Oh,  they  have  lived  long  on 
the  alms- basket  of  words.  I  marvel  thy  master 
hath  not  eaten  thee  for  a  word ;  for  thou  art  not 
so  long  by  the  head  as  houorificabilitudinitatibus; 
thou  art  easier  swallowed  than  a  flai>dragon." 
This  word  contains  twenty-seven  letters.  "  Thus," 
says  the  Literary  Difjest,  "  Shakespeare,  as  usual, 
stands  at  the  top."  But  the  editor  will  find  sanc- 
tioned in  the  Standard  Dictionary  the  twenty- 
eight-lettered  word,  antitranssubstantiationalist. 

The  German  language  is  singularly  well 
adapted  for  the  formation  of  compound  words, 
which  the  English  language  is  not  (see  p.  225), 
and  hence  big  words  in  German  are  quite  beyond 
rivalry.  For  instance,  there  is  the  word  Con- 
stantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifenmacherge  - 
sellschaft  (d9  letters),  meaning  "an  association  of 
Constantinopolitan  bagpipe  makers."  A  German- 
American  fearlessly — and  correctly — announces 
that  this  word,  when  properly  written,  has  seven 
additional  letters.  But  there  is  a  word  of  71  let- 
ters, attri])uted  to  Bismarck,  and  if  it  l)e,  as  some 


216  WORD-COINAGE. 

one  has  put  it,  "a  worthy  offspring  of  a  mighty 
brain,"  it  is  also  much  more  than  a  proper 
mouthfuh  Bismarck  disliked  everything  foreign, 
especially  everything  French,  and  the  word 
"apotheker"  provoked  his  disapproval  as  having 
a  foreign,  though  certainly  not  a  French,  kinship. 
As  a  substitute,  so  the  story  goes,  he  proposed  a 
truly  German  word,  defining  an  apothecary. 
Here  it  is:  Gesundheitswiederherstellungsmittel- 
zusammenmischungsverhaltnisskundiger. 

Speaking  of  sesquipedalian  words,  on  page  837 
of  Liddell  and  Scott's  Greek  Lexicon  may  be 
found  a  Greek  word  with  176  letters.  It  is  from 
one  of  the  old  plays  and  means  ''hash." 

Unlike  his  remote  predecessor,  Frederick  the 
Great,  Wilhelm  II.  is  averse  to  French  words  in 
the  German  language,  and  he  has  made  several 
attempts  to  have  substituted  for  them  German  or 
Germanized  words.  The  first  published  imperial 
order  of  the  year  1899  was  entitled  "Germaniza- 
tion  of  Certain  Foreign  Expressions,"  and  began 
as  follows :  "  AVith  a  view  of  furthering  the  pur- 
ity of  language  in  my  army,  I  give  orders,  in 
consequence  of  a  report  that  has  been  made  to  me, 
that  while  paying  full  regard  to  traditions,  from 
to-day  the  following  expressions  are  to  be  re- 
placed by  the  German  words  written  opposite  to 
them."  Then  followed  a  list  of  titles  and  expres- 
sions to  be  changed.  A  more  recent  order  of 
Emperor  Wilhelm  is  to  substitute  English  for 
French  in  the  higher  classes  of  the  upper  schools 
or  gymnasia.     In  the  lower  classes  it  is  to   be 


SOME    VERBAL    CURIOS.  217 

made  equal  with  Greek.  The  political  meaning 
of  this  decree  may  become  historic.  Germany 
is  reaching  out  in  the  commercial  affairs  of  the 
world,  and  the  Emperor,  whether  by  advice  or 
his  own  discernment,  sees  that  in  order  to  cope 
with  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  and  to  diminish  the 
odds  against  his  own,  the  latter  must  know  the 
English  language. 

The  words  of  command  are  no  longer  given  in 
French,  and  all  drill  words,  names  of  accoutre- 
ments, etc.,  of  French  extraction  have  been 
abolished  by  the  Germans.  Wilhelm's  patriot- 
ism is  somewhat  truculent,  but  who  can  blame 
him  for  loving  his  own  land  and  his  own  lan- 
guage ?  It  is  very  natural  that  he  should  wish 
to  redeem  his  mother  tongue  from  the  badge  of 
servitude  which  the  French  in  particular  had  set 
upon  it.  Prince  Bismarck,  too,  insisted  that  it 
was  the  supremest  folly  to  think  of  abolishing 
the  "bearded  type."  The  German  script,  how- 
ever, has  been  a  thing  of  barbaric  mystery  to  for- 
eign eyes  these  many  years,  and  set  spectacles  on 
every  other  German  nose  throughout  the  Father- 
land. Charles  V.  loathed  the  German  lan- 
guage. He  called  it  "the  language  of  horses"; 
but  then  it  should  be  remembered  that  Charles 
was  more  of  a  Spaniard  than  a  German.  When 
Napoleon,  by  changing  the  date  of  the  annexa- 
tion of  Corsica  to  France,  made  himself  a 
Frenchman,  he  took  a  terrible  dislike  to  the 
Italian  language  and  showed  his  intense  disgust 
if  any  deputation  addressed  him  in  that  language. 


218  WORD-COINAGE. 

The  present  Kaiser  has  a  like  prejudice  against 
the  French  language,  and  when  he  ascended  the 
throne  he  had  a  number  of  foreign  words  in  every 
department  abolished  and  replaced  by  German 
terms.  He  eliminated  all  Gallicisms  from  the 
imperial  bills  of  fare,  even  insisting  on  having 
Speisenfolge  in  place  of  menu. 

The  Emperor  also  issued  an  edict  making  it 
obligatory  on  his  subjects  to  be  very  careful  in 
their  pick  of  words  when  speaking  of  the  married 
fair  sex.  A  general's  wife  must  be  alluded  to  as 
consort  (  Gemahlin)  ;  a  woman  whose  husband  is 
high  in  the  civil  service  must  be  called  spouse 
( Gattin)  ;  she  who  belongs  to  the  bourgeoise  is 
her  husband's  lady  (Fran)  ;  while  the  working- 
man's  helpmate  is  just  a  plain  wife  (Weib). 
Anent  these  amenities  an  American  journal  re- 
marks :  "  The  peculiarity  of  this  mathematic 
distinction  is  that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  it 
cannot  be  applied  to  speaking  to  the  consorts, 
spouses,  ladies,  or  wives  directly.  It  is  a  law  for 
the  recognition  of  the  social  prestige  of  the 
absent — the  very  refinement  of  politeness." 

Julian  Hawthorne  writes  me  :  ''  I  have  Wor- 
cester, Webster,  the  Century,  and  the  Standard 
dictionaries,  and  have  not  yet  finished  using  the 
words  therein  collected ;  so  I  believe  I  have  not 
begun  manufacturing  on  my  own  account.  A 
dozen  years  ago,  however,  I  seem  to  have  perpe- 
trated the  inclosed,  which  is  at  your  service, 
though  I  fear  not  in  your  line." 

The  inclosure  Mr.  Hawthorne  alludes  to  is  a 


SOME    VERBAL    CURIOS.  219 

clipping  from  The  Boole  mart  (now  defunct)  of 
August,  1887,  headed  "  The  Story  of  Alphonso," 
the  subtitle  being  "A  Romance."  It  is  a  gro- 
tesque piece  of  nonsense,  too  long  to  quote,  but 
under  an  original  verbal  symbolism  is  veiled  a 
certain  prophetic  element  of  a  more  or  less  per- 
sonal tendency.  His  first  chapter  is  headed  The 
Dinkunabuhim,  and  the  author  sets  one  agog  by 
such  terms  as  catastrlfied,  hnposthumed,  bulga- 
roons,  hilliicinking,  golliicombles,  i^wrA'/e,  squinly, 
stimpered,  gattlegreens,  brolliant,  stither-and-sjnn, 
begrafed,  fumor,  raddled,  invedor,  membrenate, 
murid,  pidget,  morpid,  ravid,  greeves,  floughs, 
sprangUy  galloived,  bilbo,  "  his  breek  was  jostled," 
"hiswizandwasup,"  "crockles  along,"  "twiddling 
moonbeams,"  "he  moddled  his  face,"  "froddled 
forward,"  etc.  What  most  of  them  mean  cannot 
be  learned  from  the  context  and  only  Mr.  Haw- 
thorne knows,  if  he  remembers. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE. 

One  of  my  correspondents  thinks  that  we 
English-speaking  people  know  a  good  thing  when 
we  see  it,  and  hence  our  avidity  in  seizing  upon 
and  making  our  own  any  foreign  word  of  which 
we  really  believe  we  stand  in  need. 

"We  don't  care  where  it  comes  from.  The 
only  question  with  us  is :  Will  it  serve  our  pur- 
pose better  than  any  word  we  now  have  in  our 
vocabulary  ?  In  this  way  we  have  succeeded  in 
making  the  English  tongue  the  language  of  the 
world,  rich,  flexible,  and  adapted  to  all  peoples 
and  all  climes.  Look  at  the  long  list  of  foreign 
words  we  have  made  our  own  during  the  half 
century  just  passed.  No,  we  have  no  desire  to 
*  purify '  our  beloved  English  tongue  by  striking 
out  foreign  words  from  it.  On  the  contrary,  we 
are  in  favor  of  enriching  it  from  year  to  year 
until  it  overshadows  the  other  tongues  of  the 
world,  even  as  the  towering  oak  overshadows  the 
humble  children  of  the  plain.  God  bless  the 
English  tongue!    May  it  live  long  and  prosper!" 

To  which  I  say  amen!  But,  fortunately,  we 
do  not  all  think  alike  as  to  the  value  of  for- 
220 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURK.  221 

eign  words  for  our  own  use.  Indeed,  there  has 
been  much  wrangling  on  the  subject.  For  my 
own  part,  I  think  the  more  words  are  taken  from 
the  Latin  and  Greek  the  more  artificial  and 
flabby  our  language  becomes,  and  the  most  tedious 
writing  in  English  is  usually  that  which  contains 
a  preponderance  of  words  derived  from  those 
dead  languages. 

There  is  a  kind  of  writing  which,  as  a  fine  art, 
belles  lettres,  may  be  called  analogous  to  painting, 
and  the  fact  of  this  resemblance  is  expressed  by 
the  commonly  applied  term  "word-painting." 
Another  kind  of  writing  finds  its  analogy  in 
music,  by  reason  of  the  rhythmic  flow  of  the  sen- 
tences whose  very  sound  helps  the  meaning  and 
in  which  a  varied  tonality  may  suggest  the  whole 
gamut  of  melody  such  as  Euskin's,  up  to  the 
richest  diapason,  such  as  Milton's.  For  such 
kinds  of  writing  many  foreign  prototypes  or 
derivatives,  in  default  of  anything  so  expressive 
in  our  own  language,  are  quite  indispensable. 

In  an  address  at  Oxford  Frederic  Harrison 
offered  this  sterling  advice  :  "I  do  not  say  stick 
to  Saxon  words  and  avoid  Latin  words  as  a  law 
of  language,  because  English  now  consists  of 
both  ;  good  and  plain  English  prose  needs  both. 
We  seldom  get  the  highest  poetry  without  a  large 
use  of  Saxon,  and  we  hardly  reach  precise  and 
elaborate  explanation  without  Latin  terms.  .  .  . 
Current  English  prose — not  the  language  of 
poetry  or  of  prayer — must  be  of  both  kinds, 
Saxon  and  Latin.     But  wherever  a  Saxon  word 


222  WORD-COINAGE. 

is  enough,  use  it ;  because  if  you  have  all  the 
fulness  and  the  precision  you  need,  it  is  the  more 
simple,  the  more  direct,  the  more  homely." 

Probably  not  more  than  a  third  of  the  words 
in  the  vocabulary  are  Saxon  derivatives,  and 
the  reason  why  there  are  not  more  is  because 
didactic  English  writers  and  theologians  have  cast 
their  ideas  in  classic  molds — put  new  wine  in  old 
bottles.  Hence  many  are  the  instances  which 
indicate  the  lingual  demarcation  of  English  from 
the  original  Teutonic  branch  or  from  the  German 
language  of  to-day.  Even  in  the  grammar  itself, 
supposed  to  be  wholly  Teutonic,  a  striking  differ- 
entiation is  seen,  and  this  is  owing  to  the  count- 
less efforts  to  Latinize  our  grammar.  Yet  the 
vital,  formative  principle  of  our  language  is 
Anglo-Saxon.  Says  Richard  Grant  White  :  "If 
what  has  come  to  us  through  the  Normans,  and 
since  their  time  from  France  and  Italy  and  the 
Latin  lexicon,  were  turned  out  of  our  vocabu- 
lary, we  could  live,  and  love,  and  work,  and  talk, 
and  sing,  and  have  a  folk-lore  and  a  higher  lit- 
erature. But  take  out  the  former,  the  movement 
of  our  lives  would  be  clogged,  and  the  language 
would  fall  to  pieces  for  lack  of  framework  and 
foundation."  And  he  says  it  may  be  doubted 
"whether  out  of  the  simples  of  our  ancient  Eng- 
lish, or  Anglo-Saxon,  so  called,  we  might  not 
have  formed  a  language  copious  enough  for  all 
the  needs  of  the  highest  civilization,  and  subtle 
enough  for  all  the  requisitions  of  philosophy." 

Geor":e    Perkins    Marsh    advanced    much    the 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.        223 

same  idea.  Borrowing  so  freely  from  other 
tongues  has  brought  its  penalties.  Though  we 
have  rifled  the  whole  orbis  verbonun,  "  these  for- 
eign conquests,  indeed,  have  not  been  won  .  .  . 
without  some  shedding  of  Saxon  blood — some 
sacrifice  of  domestic  coin ;  and  if  we  have  gained 
largely  in  vocabulary,  we  have,  for  the  time  at 
least,  lost  no  small  portion  of  that  original  con- 
structive power  whereby  we  could  have  fabri- 
cated a  nomenclature  scarcely  less  wide  and 
diversified  than  that  which  we  have  borrowed 
from  so  distant  and  diversified  sources." 

Not  only  do  Anglo-Saxon  words,  like  father 
and  mother,  comprise  the  vocabulary  of  common 
life,  but  also  the  language  of  the  emotions — fear, 
sorrow,  love,  hope,  hate,  shame,  and  the  like. 
The  history  of  most  languages  shows  the  con- 
scious will  first  in  the  foreground,  while  the 
understanding  comes  to  its  own  at  a  later  date. 
Anglo-Saxon  "has  given  names  to  most  of  those 
objects  which  are  associated  with  our  strongest 
feelings — as  home,  hearth,  fireside,  life,  death, 
sickness :  and  claims  the  words  of  childhood  and 
youth,  which  for  all  after-life  have  the  dee])est 
meaning  and  are  surrounded  by  the  most  moving 
associations."  The  proportion  of  iiVnglo-Saxon 
words  in  the  authorized  version  of  the  English 
Bible,  rightly  considered  the  noblest  body  of 
English  prose  which  the  language  possesses,  is 
greater  than  in  any  other  English  book. 

From  the  Latin  are  derived  the  general  and 
abstract  terras,  while  the  Anglo-Saxon  furnishes 


224  WORD-COINAGE. 

those  which  are  special  and  definite.  In  an  essay 
Henry  Rogers  has  illustrated  this  in  the  follow- 
ing way :  " '  Move '  and  '  motion '  are  general  terms 
of  Latin  origin  ;  but  all  the  special  terms  for 
expressing  varieties  of  motion  are  Anglo-Saxon, 
as  'run,'  'walk,'  'leap,'  'stagger,'  'slip,'  'step,' 
'  slide.'  Color  is  Latin,  but  white,  black,  green,^ 
yellow,  blue,  red,  brown,  are  Anglo-Saxon. 
'Crime'  is  Latin,  but  'murder,'  'theft,'  'rob- 
bery,' 'to  lie,'  'to  steal,'  are  Anglo-Saxon.  'Mem- 
ber' and  'organ'  as  applied  to  the  body  are 
Latin  or  Greek,  but  'ear,'  'eye,'  'hand,'  'foot,' 
'lip,'  'mouth,'  'teeth,'  'hair,'  'finger,'  'nostril' 
are  Anglo-Saxon.  'Animal'  is  Latin,  but  'man,' 
'horse,'  'cow,'  'sheep,'  'dog,'  'calf,'  'goat,'  are 
Anglo-Saxon.  'Number'  is  Latin,  but  all  our 
cardinal  and  ordinal  numbers  as  far  as  a  million 
are  Anglo-Saxon." 

Many  words  of  Latin  origin,  however,  are 
equally  as  simple  and  perspicuous  as  those  of 
Anglo-Saxon  origin,  and  they  should  not  be 
avoided  merely  because  they  bear  the  mint-mark 
of  Latinity.  But  as  between  a  Latin  word  and 
an  Anglo-Saxon  word,  when  both  are  equally 
clear  and  intelligible,  preference  should  be  given 
to  the  latter. 

I  verily  believe  that  a  writer's  mental  weari- 
ness and  discouragement  often  come  from  the 
habit  of  straining  for  effects  by  using  big  words 
of  Latin  extraction.     His  diction  loses  spirit  and 

1  Strangely  enough,  the  Homeric  Greeks  had  no  ex- 
pression for  green. 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE.  225 

grows  languid  and  ponderous  when  he  ceases  to 
use  the  brisk,  glowing,  bracing,  biting  Anglo- 
Saxon  words.  He  perhaps  attributes  his  failure 
to  produce  something  effective  to  a  flagging  fancy, 
when  in  truth  his  fancy  is  still  up  to  its  pristine 
mark,  but  has  been  embodied  in  pale  and  blood- 
less derivatives.  Perhaps  his  style  is  more  debil- 
itated than  his  ideas,  though  they  too  must  be 
enfeebled  by  confinement  in  such  a  verbal  prison. 
If  he  finds  his  work  blessed  with  the  Latin 
merits  of  euphony,  sonorousness,  and  harmony, 
but  otherwise  weak  and  banal,  let  him  come  back 
to  his  mother  tongue  and  draw  on  it  for  that 
strength,  tenderness,  and  simplicity  which  makes 
English  literature  the  crowning  glory  of  all  the 
works  of  man.  Let  him  learn  there  is  no  finer 
literary  bread  than  is  made  of  English  wheat. 

The  original  Anglo-Saxon,  like  the  Greek  and 
the  modern  German,  had  the  power  of  composi- 
tion in  a  great  degree,  but  its  coalition  with  the 
Norman-French  and  the  influence  of  the  latter 
so  weakened  this  power  that  it  began  to  decay  in 
the  early  English  period.  And  now,  less  than 
any  other  language  in  the  Teutonic  family,  is  the 
English  adapted  for  new  compounds.  In  the 
power  of  composition  the  Latin  was  always  very 
deficient,  and  the  same  peculiarity  is  shown  by 
the  languages  which  have  been  derived  from  it. 
Several  reasons  account  for  the  modern  German 
influence  in  our  language,  especially  in  making 
compounds,  which,  to  say  the  least,  are  usually 
no   ornament  to  it.     De  ^lille  has  stated  these 

15 


226  WORD-COINAGE. 

reasons  as  follows:  "German  philosophy  has  a 
commanding  position  and  is  illustrated  by  several 
schools,  each  of  which  has  its  own  nomenclature 
made  up  out  of  German  words ;  and  English 
thinkers  who  discuss  philosophical  subjects  are 
forced  to  transfer  German  compounds  to  their 
own  lano^uage. 

"These  words  in  many  cases  have  roots  which 
also  exist  in  English.  In  the  case  of  scientific 
writing  every  liberty  must  be  allowed:  and  as 
the  botanist  may  freely  make  use  of  Greek 
words,  so  the  metaphysician  may  employ  German. 
But  in  general  literature  the  case  is  different,  and 
English  imitations  of  German  compounds  are  to 
be  condemned."  Among  the  objectionable  com- 
pounds De  Mille  includes  such  words  as  "time- 
spirit,"  "earth-soul,"  "hero-saint,"  "wonder- 
smith,"  "life-pleasure,"  "youth-season."  As  a 
rule,  a  compound  which  can  be  written  without  a 
hyphen  is  better  formed  than  one  which  requires 
it.  Words  come  from  the  Greek  and  Latin 
already  compounded,  but  words  that  exist  in  the 
language  are  often  compounded  with  sad  results. 
For  instance,  Hon.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  a 
polished  scholar,  made  the  execrable  compound, 
"  filiopietistic." 

Certainly  it  would  be  unwise  to  leave  the 
future  growth  of  the  English  language  to  chance, 
and  it  is  equally  clear  that  its  abuses  cannot  be 
corrected  by  legal  measures.  Jacques-George 
Danton  said  :  "  One  had  better  be  a  poor  fisher- 
man   than    meddle    with   the   art   of  governing 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.       227 

men."  So  I  say  one  might  better  be  deaf  when 
bad  grammar  or  other  solecisms  are  spoken  than 
try  to  regulate  language  by  legislation.  Radical 
changes  of  any  kind  cannot  be  made  in  a  day. 
AVas  it  not  jVEacchiavelli  who  said:  "God  will  not 
do  everything  at  once."  Literary  taste  and  crit- 
ical scholarship  may  be  safeguards  against  the 
permanent  usage  of  unfit  words,  but,  as  Archer 
says,  "the  fact  is  that  three-fourths  of  the  English 
language  would  crumble  away  before  a  purist, 
and  we  should  be  left  without  words  to  express 
the  commonest  and  most  necessary  ideas." 

Joseph  Joubert  maintained  that  it  is  a  good 
plan  to  use  words  in  their  popular  rather  than 
in  their  philosophic  sense,  and  a  still  better  plan 
to  use  them  in  their  natural  or  essential  than  in 
their  popular  sense.  "  To  prove  a  thing  by  defi- 
nition," he  says,  "proves  nothing  if  the  defini- 
tion is  purely  philosophical  ;  for  such  definitions 
only  bind  him  who  makes  them."  An  illustra- 
tion of  this  is  afforded  in  a  criticism  by  Professor 
Hyslop,  in  the  North  American  Revieic,  of  the 
recent  book.  From  India  to  the  Planet  Mars. 
Professor  Hyslop  thinks  that  M.  Flouruoy  puts  a 
peculiar  meaning  on  the  term  supernormal.  "He 
speaks  as  if  it  were  convertible  with  supernat- 
ural. He  considers  these  processes  (of  clairvoy- 
ance) as  perfectly  natural,  and  in  the  case  of  tel- 
epathy speaks  of  it  as  something  rather  to  be 
expected  than  doubted.  You  would  suppose  that 
the  'supernormal'  sustained  the  same  relation  to 
the  normal  that  hypersesthesia  sustains  to  sesthe- 


228  WORD-COINAGE. 

sia ;  but  no,  it  is  made  equivalent  to  the  super- 
natural, and  this  assumption  annihilates  all  ra- 
tional perspective  in  the  case,"  which  is  that  of 
the  famous  spiritist  medium,  "Mile.  Smith,"  of 
Geneva,  S^Yitzerland. 

"  But  to  prove  a  thing  by  definition,"  goes  on 
Joubert  (in  Matthew'Arnold's  translation),  "when 
the  definition  expresses  the  necessary,  inevitable, 
and  clear  idea  which  the  world  at  large  attaches 
to  the  object,  is,  on  the  contrary,  all  in  all ;  be- 
cause then  what  one  does  is  simply  to  show  people 
what  they  do  really  think,  in  spite  of  themselves 
and  without  knowing  it.  The  rule  that  one  is 
free  to  give  to  words  what  sense  one  will,  and 
that  the  only  thing  needful  is  to  be  agreed  upon 
the  sense  one  gives  them,  is  very  well  for  the  mere 
purposes  of  argumentation  ;  but  in  the  genuine 
world  of  literature  it  is  good  for  nothing." 

Bacon  believed  that  the  Elizabethan  language 
would  become  obsolete.  Perhaps  he  fondly 
dreamed  of  a  time  when  the  English  language 
would  be  entirely  Latinized.  However  that  may 
be,  if  we  accept  orthodox  history,  it  was  the 
sturdy  and  intense  individualism  of  the  Saxons 
which  enabled  them  to  overcome  the  more  or  less 
communistic  Britons  and  Angles  and  Danes,  and 
finally  the  Kormans. 

The  greatest  reaction  against  the  dead  lan- 
guages ever  seen  in  this  country  is  shown  to-day ; 
and  this  prejudice  is  growing,  even  among  col- 
lege-bred men.  Why  is  it?  In  literature  the 
English  language  is  richest  of  all  languages,  and 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE.  229 

it  is  superior  to  any  other,  except  in  the  matter 
of  precision.  A  complete  study  of  etymoloofv  and 
philology  should,  no  doubt,  include  the  Greek 
and  Latin  languages,  but  for  knowledge  and  as 
means  of  discipline  the  value  of  these  languages 
has  been  and  is  still  much  overestimated.  Of 
late  years,  however,  the  study  of  Greek  has 
steadily  declined.  Look  over  the  college  cur- 
ricula and  you  will  see  how  many  provide  elec- 
tive studies  in  place  of  Greek.  Fifty  years  ago 
the  idea  of  a  liberal  education  made  the  study 
of  Greek  compulsory.  It  is  generally  conceded 
among  scholars  to  be  a  model,  an  ideal,  lan- 
guage, vastly  superior  to  Latin,  two  serious 
faults  in  the  latter  being  the  lack  of  the  article 
and  of  a  distinction  between  the  preterit  and  the 
aorist  tenses.  But  Greek  seems  to  have  had  its 
day. 

There  is  much  truth  in  Herbert  Spencer's 
remark  that  ''if  we  inquire  what  is  the  real 
motive  for  giving  boys  a  classical  education  we 
find  it  to  be  simply  conformity  to  public  custom." 
Certainly  English  etymology  is  not  acquired  by 
mastering  the  vocabulary  of  Homer  ancl  Horace, 
or  learning  by  rote  the  conjugation  of  tupio  and 
amo. 

The  English  language  has  no  better  friend  to- 
day than  Thomas  J.  Allen,  President  of  Aurora 
College,  who  has  made  some  observations,  not 
less  fair  than  candid,  relating  to  classic  learning. 
He  maintains  that  for  all  but  the  1  per  cent,  of 
college  students  who  will  become  specialists,  the 


230  WORD-COINAGE. 

study  of  three  or  four  languages  concurrently  is 
a  shameful  waste  of  time  and  energy.  "The 
study  of  the  classics,"  says  Professor  Allen,  "ex- 
ercises little  more  than  the  verbal  memory.  That 
the  study  of  Latin  and  Greek  is  the  best  means 
of  acquiring  a  good  English  style  is  pure  pre- 
sumption. A  knowledge  of  Anglo-Saxon  is  of 
more  value  for  this  end  than  a  knowledge  of 
Latin.  Notwithstanding  the  attempts  of  gram- 
marians to  Latinize  our  grammar,  English  re- 
mains an  uninflected,  almost  a  grammarless  ^ 
tongue,  to  be  acquired  more  by  practice  than  by 
rule.  A  knowledge  of  original  meaning  is  not  a 
safe  guide  to  present  use  ;  the  history  of  a  word 
and  its  present  use  are  more  important  than  its 
original  signification.  Common  observation,  as 
well  as  literary  history,  shows  that  there  is  little 
relation  between  ability  to  write  pure  English 
and  knowledge  of  the  classics,  '  Every  lan- 
guage,' says  Macaulay,  'throws  light  on  every 
other.'  We  acknowledge,  too,  that  the  great 
body  of  our  educated  countrymen  learn  to 
grammatize  their  English  by  means  of  their 
Latin.  This,  however,  proves,  not  the  useful- 
ness of  their  Latin,  but  the  folly  of  their  in- 
structors. .  .  .  Not  more  than  5  per  cent,  of 
those  who  translate  from  Horace  or  Homer  have 
the  time  or  inclination  to  do  more  than,  by  the 
help  of  lexicon  and  paradigm,  to  render  a  pass- 

1  This  fact  is  ably  and  amply  demonstrated  by  Rich- 
ard Grant  White  "in  Words  and  Their  Uses  and  in 
Every-Day  English. 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE,        231 

able  translation ;  and  of  that  5,  not  1  per  cent, 
would,  five  years  after  graduation,  choose  to  read 
the  original  in  preference  to  a  translation.  Xot 
only  because  there  are  in  English  better  transla- 
tions of  the  classics  than  the  ordinary  student 
could,  at  great  loss  of  time  and  energy,  make 
for  himself,  but  because  our  own  language  con- 
tains a  greater  literature  than  the  ancient  classics, 
is  it  necessary  to  devote  much  time  to  Greek  and 
Latin  ?  " 

Having  carefully  measured  and  examined  the 
shallows  of  American  culture,  Professor  ^lark  H. 
Liddell  not  only  succinctly  outlines  the  defects 
in  our  educational  methods  and  ideals,  but 
proposes  a  humanistic  way  of  meeting  the  new 
conditions  and  needs  of  the  twentieth  century. 
Some  of  his  views  tally  with  those  of  Professor 
Allen,  as  where  he  says :  "  Modern  science  has 
entirely  overthrown  this  notion  of  the  ideal  per- 
fection of  Latin  and  Greek  as  means  of  expres- 
sion, and  modern  life  is  beginning  to  demand 
more  economy  in  the  expenditure  of  educational 
time  than  is  illustrated  by  a  five  years'  propae- 
deutic for  the  mastery  of  a  dead  language." 

What  Professor  Liddell  very  sensibly  brings 
to  our  notice  is  the  necessity  for  a  national  culture 
whose  literary  elements,  if  they  are  to  harmonize 
with  our  science,  "  must  be  such  as  are  closely 
allied  to  our  national  experience,  our  national 
life,  and  national  habits  of  thought.  And  if 
literature  is  to  be  used  as  machinery  of  culture, 
we  must  found  our  culture  upon  the  study  of  our 


232  WORD-COINAGE. 

own  literature."  Then  be  points  out  a  deeper 
reason  why  our  culture  should  be  national,  by 
showing  that  a  national  speech  is  much  more 
than  a  means  of  general  communication  and  a 
vehicle  of  expression ;  it  is  a  way  of  looking  at 
life  and  is  the  embodiment  of  a  national  exper- 
ience. He  truly  says  there  is  "a  heredity  in 
speech  "  and  that  "  we  think  in  inherited  idiom 
even  after  we  learn  to  translate  our  thought  into 
foreign  words.  ...  To  seek  culture  in  a  for- 
eign speech  before  mastering  the  native  one  is 
only  to  exchange  natural  for  artificial  limitations, 
which,  as  it  cannot  understand  their  nature,  only 
confuse  and  embarrass  the  mind's  thinking  pro- 
cesses." 

We  now  seem  to  be  putting  the  cart  before  the 
horse  in  pursuing  classic  studies  and  really 
neglecting  our  own  living  speech.  Sir  Robert 
Ball  is  one  of  many  men  who  desire  to  see  "  such 
a  reform  of  the  educational  systems  as  shall  give 
to  science  its  true  position.  Too  much  imix)rtance 
is  at  present  given  to  the  study  of  languages." 
But  there  is  one  good  thing  about  it — the  Greek 
and  Latin  vocabularies  will  be  drained  dry  after 
a  time,  if  the  scientists,  the  parsons,  and  espe- 
cially the  doctors,  keep  drawing  on  them  as  they 
have  been  doing  for  centuries.  Then  we  may 
come  to  our  senses,  throw  overboard  a  lot  of  our 
useless  and  damaged  cargo,  and,  to  mix  the  meta- 
phor a  little  more,  begin  excavating  on  our  own 
historic  premises.  All  this  may  happen  some 
time  before  the  close  of  the  present  century,  when 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE.  233 

the  Rev.  T.  DeWitt  Talmage  predicts  that  health- 
ologij  will  be  complete  aud  imiversal. 

By  a  happy  coiucidence  English  was  made  the 
official  language  of  the  kingdom  of  Great  Britain 
about  the  time  Geoftry  Chaucer  began  to  write, 
and  perhaps  for  this  reason  it  was  once  the  fashion 
erroneously  to  style  him  the  "  Father  of  English 
Poetry."  To  a  large  extent  his  vocabulary  and 
grammar  had  become  obsolete  at  the  time  the 
Bard  of  Avon  was  wooing  Melpomene  and 
Thalia.  I  have  often  wondered  whether  Shake- 
speare would  have  been  a  greater  writer  if  he 
could  have  had  command  of  an  English  vocabu- 
lary as  copious  as  our  present  one.  Perhaps,  by 
the  use  of  our  modern  words  he  might  have  been 
a  more  accomplished,  but  not  a  stronger,  writer  ; 
for  he  had  a  good  stock  of  Anglo-Saxon  words 
at  hand,  and,  to  paraphrase  from  Story  : 

Now  clear,  pure,  hard,   bright,  and  one  by  one  like  to 

hailstones, 
Short  words  fell  from    his  pen   fast   as    the    first   of  a 

shower. 

Back  of  Shakespeare's  perfection  of  art  was  his 
unexampled  genius  as  a  psychologist.  In  the 
words  of  Lewis  W.  Smith  :  "  No  one  talks  or 
ever  did  talk  such  noble  poetry  as  Portia's  speech 
in  the  trial  scene  or  Hamlet's  soliloquy.  All  the 
finer  passages  in  the  great  dramatist,  all  the  more 
perfect  presentations  of  passion,  transcend  the 
realities  of  human  speech  ;  but  as  a  more  com- 
plete expression  of  feeling  than  is  actually  pos- 


234  ■  WORD-COINAGE. 

sible  we  accept  them  with  unquestioning  faith  in 
their  fidelity  to  the  enduring  facts  of  life." 

AVhen  driven  to  mental  bay,  Shakespeare  in- 
vented his  own  verbal  means  of  extricating  him- 
self His  pithy  phrases  and  terse  expressions 
have  never  been  surpassed,  and  yet  he  used  only 
15,000  different  words,  and  the  great  ^lilton  used 
but  8000.  But  did  you  ever  stop  to  think  that 
the  only  dictionary  of  the  English  language  at 
the  time  of  Shakespeare's  death  contained  just 
5080  words,  and  that  in  ]Milton's  day  the  lan- 
guage had  been  enriched,  according  to  the  best 
dictionary,  to  only  13,000  words?  AVho  dares  to 
estimate  how  many  words  Shakespeare  would  use 
if  he  lived  in  these  days,  when  the  number  of 
dictionary  words  exceeds  300,000?  Countless 
men  of  modern  times  have  used  more  words  than 
did  Shakespeare  and  ^lilton  together. 

For  the  ordinary  needs  of  cultivated  intercourse 
from  3000  to  5000  words  are  necessary,  says  Whit- 
ney, in  his  Life  and  Growth  of  Language.  Both 
he  and  Preyer  state  that  a  vocabulary  of  from 
25,000  to  30,000  words  is  not  unusual  among 
well-educated  persons.  When  Professor  Whitney 
made  that  statement  he  estimated  the  whole  num- 
ber of  words  in  the  language  at  100,000.  When 
he  put  forth  the  Century  Dictionary,  a  few  years 
later,  he  found  about  225,000. 

Professor  E.  S.  Holden  tested  himself  by  a 
reference  to  all  the  words  in  Webster's  Un- 
abridged Dictionary,  and  found  that  33,456  words 
comprised  his  own  vocabulary,  which  doubtless 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.       235 

would  have  proved  much  larger  had  he  been 
able  to  consult  the  more  recent  Century  or  Stand- 
ard dictionaries,  not  then  published.  Mr.  Edwin 
W.  Doran,  of  Clinton,  Mo.,  says  an  unusually 
talkative  parrot  of  his  acquaintance  had  a  vocab- 
ulary of  fifty-nine  words,  several  of  which  he 
heard  it  use  very  fluently.  It  could,  no  doubt, 
speak  many  more,  and  it  seemed  to  understand 
the  meaning  of  those  used.  It  spoke  Spanish, 
French,  and  English. 

]Mr.  Doran,  who  is  an  earnest  investigator  in 
educational  matters,  concludes  a  magazine  article 
as  follows:  "If  a  word  is  the  sign  of  an  idea,  as 
we  have  been  taught,  the  person  knowing  the 
most  words — other  things  being  equal — will  have 
the  most  ideas.  We  think  only  in  words,  and 
the  man  who  has  the  most  words  ought  to  have 
the  most  thoughts.  A  man  without  clear  defini- 
tions of  words  will  likely  be  without  clear  ideas. 
Hence  both  clear  thinking  and  clear  expression 
of  thought  depend  upon  the  extent  and  accuracv 
of  one's  vocabulary."  This  author  advises  the 
habit  of  reading  with  a  standard  dictionary  at 
one's  elbow.  When  new  words  are  met,  thev 
should  be  mastered  as  to  definition,  and  then  fixed 
in  the  mind,  so  that  they  will  be  immediately 
available  when  there  is  occasion. 

It  has  been  estimated  that  there  are  860  dis- 
tinct languages  and  al:)out  5000  dialects  spoken 
by  peoples  now  living  in  the  world.  Of  the 
various  languages,  89  are  allotted  to  Europe,  123 
to  Asia,  114  to  Africa,  117  to  America,  and  417 


236  WORD-COINAGE. 

to  the  islands  of  the  Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans. 
Plutarch  says  that  Cleopatra  "spoke  most  lan- 
guages," and  that  she  seldom  needed  an  interpre- 
ter when  she  gave  audiences  to  foreign  ambassa- 
dors, but  Plutarch's  veracity  is  somewhat  elastic. 
At  all  events,  if  Cleopatra  was  anything  like  her 
sisters  of  to-day,  it  is  safe  to  believe  that  she 
always  had  "the  last  word." 

With  all  these  languages  is  it  not  surprising 
what  dense  ignorance  there  is,  even  in  civilized 
countries?  Take  Kussia :  there  you  find,  in  the 
two  capitals  themselves,  a  curious  detail.  Says  a 
writer  in  Scribner's  Macjazine :  "All  the  shops 
which  offer  wares  to  the  people  do  so,  not  in 
words,  as  with  us,  but  with  pictures.  The  provi- 
sion merchant's  shop  is  a  veritable  picture-gal- 
lery of  sausages  and  cheeses  and  bread  and  butter 
and  hams  and  everything  eatable.  The  iron- 
monger hangs  out  illustrations  of  knives  and 
forks  and  scissors  and  chisels  and  foot-rules,  and 
the  like.  The  tailor  shows  paintings  of  coats  and 
trousers.  Why  is  this?  Simply  because  a  ma- 
jority of  potential  customers  cannot  read.  .  .  . 
The  Russian  people,  then,  is  illiterate,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word." 

About  60  per  cent,  of  the  Russian  people  can 
neither  read  nor  write,  and  those  who  can  write 
have  to  be  very  discreet  if  they  would  escape  the 
vengeance  of  the  public  censor  and  the  secret 
police — ever  on  the  watch  for  "free  thinkers," 
who  are  regarded  as  no  better  than  enemies  of 
the  Great  White  Tsar's  government.     It  was  less 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.       237 

than  a  century  ago  that  the  Russian  language 
attained  its  full  development,  chiefly  through  the 
genius  of  the  two  great  poets,  Pushkin  and  Ler- 
montoff,  who  hold  the  same  rank  in  Russian  as 
do  their  contemporaries,  Goethe  and  Schiller,  in 
German  literature.  But  there  still  remain  philo- 
logic  snags  in  the  Russian  language  which  pre- 
clude a  broad  range  of  expression,  and,  all  things 
considered,  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  wretched 
serfs  and  peasants  of  that  country  are  not  savants. 

The  final  stage  in  the  rational  development  of 
language  is  intelligent,  conscious  construction. 
But  who  is  to  do  it?  Who  is  to  overhaul  the 
language,  strike  out  objectionable  forms,  correct 
inappropriate  expressions,  and  supply  deficien- 
cies? Language  grows  and  changes  by  natural 
processes  of  evolution,  despite  the  dicta  of  gram- 
marians and  rhetoricians.  Can  its  development 
and  use  as  an  instrument  of  expression  be  con- 
trolled by  legislation  like  law,  the  instrument  of 
justice? 

Shades  of  our  forefathers,  no  !  It  would  be 
setting  an  appalling  precedent  for  Congress  to 
attempt  to  amend  English  spelling  or  to  simplify 
English  grammar,  not  to  mention  the  pitiful 
results  of  such  tinkering.  It  is  not  within  the 
scope  of  legislative  tribunals  to  tamper  with  a 
language  which  is  largely  the  product  of  intui- 
tive reason  and  of  agencies  entirely  outside  the 
pale  of  civic  or  other  authority.  In  the  world 
to-day  there  are  two  currents  which  flow  together 
in  places,  part  in  others,  and  again  run  counter. 


238  WORD-COINAGE. 

The  tendency  of  art,  literature,  theology,  and 
government  is  to  complicate  the  general  under- 
standing of  elementary  laws.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  a  utilitarian  influence  in  civilization 
which  tends  not  only  to  level  social  conditions, 
but  to  clarify  philosophy,  to  modernize  the  pro- 
cesses of  culture,  and  to  specialize  the  functions 
of  human  labor  and  activity.  What  seem  to  us 
complexities  are  mainly  the  result  of  combina- 
tion of  a  few  simple  elements — but  a  combination 
that  may  be  incalculable  in  its  power  and  extent. 
We  have  modern  science  to  thank  for  lifting  the 
cloud  of  mystery  and  ignorance  which  once  shut 
out  from  the  vision  of  mankind  many  truths  of 
nature  and  of  life.  But  her  mission  is  not  half 
attained  ;  her  finest  miracles  are  yet  to  come. 
She  sometimes  discovers  the  secrets  of  natural  law 
in  a  blind,  clumsy  way,  but  her  final  results  are 
sure  and  clear.  As  the  aim  of  the  inventor  is  to 
make  his  device  as  simple  in  construction  as  pos- 
sible, so  the  ultimate  aim  of  science  must  be  to 
bring  order  out  of  chaos,  and,  while  deepening 
the  channels  of  knowledge,  now  littered  with  lin- 
guistic wrecks,  to  let  into  them  pellucid  streams 
of  thought  which  shall  sweep  away  all  verbal 
derelicts  that  should  have  been  in  the  Saraijossa 
Sea  of  language  long  ago. 

White  insists,  more  than  once  and  with  the 
most  forcible  proofs,  that  the  misuse  of  language 
cannot  be  justified  by  ever  so  good  authority; 
that  a  new  word  may  be  good  English  not  because 
a  great  writer   uses  it,  but  "because  its  meaning 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.       239 

is  clear  and  its  formation  normal."  Such  words 
come  at  once  "by  intuition  to  men  who  are  mas- 
terful in  language,  or  ready  and  true  in  its 
apprehension."  He  declares  that  "  Neologism  is 
not  reprehensible  if  the  deviation  from  precedent 
is  in  the  line  of  normal  movement ;  which  is  a 
very  different  matter,  for  instance,  from  the  sub- 
stitution of  one  part  of  speech  for  another." 

Again  he  says:  "If  there  are  to  be  no  new 
words,  how  can  language  express  more  than  the 
first  and  lowest  needs  of  human  nature  ?  With- 
out neologism  language  could  not  grow,  could 
not  conform  itself  to  the  new  needs  of  new  gen- 
erations. .  .  .  But  one  parent  of  language 
must  be  precedent.  The  language  of  one  genera- 
tion brings  forth  the  language  of  the  next  as 
surely  as  the  women  of  one  generation  bring 
forth  the  men  of  the  next.  Hence,  indeed,  the 
language  spoken  by  a  people  is  its  mother 
tongue.  ...  If  we  make  the  use  of  eminent 
writers  and  cultivated  speakers  authoritative,  we 
shall  soon  find  ourselves  involved  in  a  conflict 
not  only  of  use  with  reason,  and  of  use  with  pre- 
cedent, but  of  use  with  itself." 

Professor  Breal  recognizes  the  diverse  aspects 
of  this  question  of  neologism  in  saying:  ''To 
condemn  neologism  in  principle  and  absolutely 
would  be  the  most  annoying  and  the  most  useless 
of  prohil^itions.  Each  onward  step  of  a  language 
is  the  work  first  of  an  individual,  then  of  a  more 
or  less  large  minority.  A  country  in  which  inno- 
vations  were   forbidden  would  deprive  its   Ian- 


240  WORD-COINAGE. 

guage  of  all  chance  of  development.  By  neolo- 
gism we  must  understand  the  bestowal  of  a  new 
meaning  on  an  old  word,  as  well  as  the  introduc- 
tion of  a  wholly  new  vocable.  Just  as  the  change 
which  modifies  pronunciation  is  at  once  imper- 
ceptible and  constant,  to  such  a  degree  that  a 
stranger  who  returns  to  a  country  after  thirty 
years  of  absence  can  appreciate  the  march  of 
time,  .so  also  is  the  meaning  of  words  being  cease- 
lessly transformed  by  the  action  of  events,  new  dis- 
coveries, of  revolutions  in  ideas  and  in  customs. 
A  contemporary  of  Lamartine  would  find  it  dif- 
ficult to  understand  the  language  of  modern 
French  newspapers.  We  all  work  more  or  less 
at  the  vocabulary  of  the  future,  whether  we  are 
scholars  or  unlettered,  writers  or  artists,  men  of 
society  or  men  of  the  people.  Children  have  a 
part  in  it  which  is  by  no  means  small ;  as  they 
take  up  the  language  at  the  point  to  which  the 
preceding  generations  have  brought  it,  they  gen- 
erally are  ten  or  twenty  years  in  advance  of  their 
parents.  The  limit  at  wliich  the  riglit  of  inno- 
vation ceases  is  not  determined  I)y  the  idea  of 
purity  alone,  which  can  always  be  disputed  ;  it 
is  also  im}30sed  by  the  need  which  we  feel  of 
remaining  in  contact  with  the  minds  of  those  who 
have  gone  before." 

Doubtless  the  English  language,  like  the 
French,  is  eccentric,  illogical,  and  unsystematic 
in  some  of  its  spelling.  As  a  rural  friend  of  mine 
says,  "there's  too  much  of  it."  Revision  and 
reform  in  our  orthography  are  alleged  to  be  cry- 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE.  241 

ing  needs,  and,  except  for  the  difficulty  of  intro- 
ducing it,,  many  people  claim  there  is  no  valid 
objection  to  phonetic  spelling — not  even  the  ety- 
mologic objection,  for  etymology  as  a  study,  they 
say,  \YOuld  be  of  no  value  if  there  were  a  change- 
less orthography. 

The  American  Philological  Association  is  the 
strongest  supporter  in  this  country  of  the  spelling- 
reform  movement.  Its  members  contend  that 
the  irregular  spelling  of  the  English  language  is 
a  great  hindrance  to  the  progress  of  the  educa- 
tion of  those  speaking  it  and  to  its  spread  among 
other  nations ;  that  it  involves  a  waste  of  millions 
of  dollars,  for  each  generation,  for  teachers  and 
for  writing  and  printing  superfluous  letters,  and, 
most  grievous  of  all,  that  it  actually  causes  a 
loss  of  two  years  of  the  school  time  of  each  child, 
and  is  mainly  the  cause  of  the  alarming  illiteracy 
of  our  people.  These  reformers  are  now  trying 
to  get  a  bill,  in  one  form  or  another,  through 
Congress  to  do  away  with  letters  that  are  not 
sounded,  their  aim  being,  for  one  thing,  to  influ- 
ence publishers  and  printers  generally  to  use  the 
soft  "g"  for  the  sound  of  "j "  in  all  cases.  They 
are  urging  the  adoption  of  gradual  amendments, 
mainly  the  dropping  of  silent  letters — especially 
of  the  final  "e"  and  the  change  of  "ed"  to  "t" 
in  preterits  and  past  participles.  They  claim  there 
is  an  inconsistency  in  using  so  lumbering  a  mass 
of  letters  as  occur  in  "called"  and  "stepped" 
for  the  sake  of  designating  sounds  exactly  analo- 
gous to  those  expressed  by  "bald"  and  "wept." 


242  WORD-COINAGE. 

Professor  Francis  H.  March,  who  is  at  the  head 
of  this  spelling-reform  movement,  says:  "It 
requires  a  special  adjustment  of  the  vocal  cords 
to  utter  '  d '  a  sonant  after  a  surd,  and  to  neglect 
the  adjustment  turns  'd'  into  a  't,'  as  in  blest, 
past,  curst,  for  the  unpronounceable  blesd,  pasd, 
cursd."  Ko  one  should  grumble  at  such  changes 
or  because  the  preterits  of  our  regular  verbs  are 
two  syllables  shorter  than  they  were  in  the  time 
of  Wyclif 

Various  odd  phrases  and  forms  of  expression 
have  passed  or  are  passing  out  of  use,  "  because 
of  a  perception  that  they  are  at  variance  with 
reason."  Among  these  are  the  double  negatives 
and  double  superlatives,  universally  used  by 
Anglo-Saxon  and  early  English  speakers  and 
writers  up  to  about  the  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth century ;  also  the  separation  of  the  limit- 
ing adjective  from  the  word  which  it  modifies, 
etc.  These  changes,  including  the  lopping  off  of 
nearly  all  the  Anglo-Saxon  inflections,  are  due 
chiefly  to  the  logical  exactions  of  modern  thought. 

But  some  of  the  changes  proposed  by  this  asso- 
ciation are  rather  complex,  for  with  every  rule 
formulated  is  an  exception  or  two.  It  may  be 
questioned  whether  cluttering  a  reform  system  of 
spelling  with  exceptions  would  not  be  as  trouble- 
some as  is  our  present  bad  spelling ;  whether  the 
remedies  would  not  be  worse  than  the  disease. 
Then,  too,  imagine  the  average  member  of  Con- 
gress passing  his  erudite  opinion  upon  such  mat- 
ters.     "  Laws  are  enforced  by  penalties,  because 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.        243 

the  violation  of  law  is  injurious  to  society  ;  but 
penalties  for  breach  of  etiquette,  of  fashion,  and 
of  correct  lano-uage  are  unnecessary"  (Allen). 

The  chief  difficulty  with  these  suggestions  of 
the  Spelling  Reform  Association  is  that  they  are 
only  half-way  measures,  for  they  do  not  cover 
phonetic  requirements.  Such  a  makeshift  system, 
owing  its  authority,  though  it  may,  to  the  dic- 
tates of  common  sense,  and  that  of  an  unusually 
acute  kind,  will  not  answer  in  the  long  run.  The 
fad  is,  we  need  more,  not  feicer,  letters.  AVe  lack 
an  alphabet  which  represents  all  the  sounds  in 
our  language  in  a  simple  and  uniform  manner. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  the  French  language, 
but  the  incomplete  and  defective  Roman  alpha- 
bet is  managed  much  more  consistently  by  the 
French  than  by  the  English-speaking  people. 

Phonetically  analyzed,  there  are  forty  distinct 
elementary  sounds  in  English,  and  only  forty  dis- 
tinct letters  can  completely  represent  them.  It 
is  particularly  rich  in  vowels,  and  few  others  of 
the  Indo-European  group  have  such  a  variety  of 
sounds.  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that  the  demands 
of  English  phonetics  are  but  inadequately  met 
by  our  present  alphabet,  and  that  radical  changes, 
assuming  that  they  are  desirable,  cannot  be  made 
possible  until  a  complete  phonetic  alphabet  is 
adopted.  Each  letter  of  this  proposed  alphabet 
must  always  have  a  significance  and  always  the 
same  significance. 

Says  Dr.  A.  L.  Benedict:  "A  genuine  English 
spelling  reform  cannot  logically  stop  much  short 


244  WORD-COINAGE. 

of  the  adoption  of  a  unilinear  system  of  writing, 
analogous  to  the  simple  style  of  several  steno- 
graphic alphabets  now  in  vogue.  .  .  .  Any 
attempt  at  spelling  reform  while  retaining  the 
present  Roman  alphabet  must  result  as  unsatis- 
factorily as  the  effort  to  remodel  for  a  big  boy  a 
suit  of  clothes  a  third  too  small  for  him." 

Perhaps,  for  their  own  uses,  the  spelling  reform- 
ers might  add  to  our  alphabet  fourteen  letters  to 
stand  for  the  sounds  now  not  represented  by  let- 
ters, and  thus  solve  the  crux  that  confronts  them. 
This  plan  would  ol)viate  making  too  abrupt  a 
departure  from  the  Roman  alphabet,  which,  they 
doubtless  will  admit,  is  good  enough  as  far  as  it 
goes.  But,  seriously,  slight  changes  in  spelling 
may  be  both  advisable  and  possible  within  the 
phonetic  limits  of  our  present  alpha])et.  But  the 
proposed  substitution  of  "f "  for  "ph,"  the  drop- 
ping of  "o"  and  "a"  from  ancient  diphthongs 
ending  in  "  e,"  etc. — these  changes  violate  custom 
and  the  history  of  the  words  themselves,  while 
they  preserve  the  expedients  of  silent  indicators 
and  arbitrary  binominal  expressions  of  single 
sounds.  The  same  sound,  sometimes  represented 
by  "f"  and  sometimes  by  "ph,"  is  not  a  matter 
of  accident.  The  latter  originally  indicated  a 
difference  in  pronunciation  and  almost  always 
marks  a  derivation  from  the  Greek,  "f"  being 
sounded  between  the  lower  lip  and  upper  teeth, 
while  the  Greek  2)hi  was  blown  between  the  lips. 
Important  changes  in  the  English  language  are 
denoted  by  the  peculiarities  in  our  spelling,  and 


LANGUAGE    AND    CULTURE.  245 

the  latter,  as  recording  the  source  of  contribu- 
tions to  our  vocabulary,  are  of  value.  Dr.  Ben- 
edict aptly  says  that  by  no  means  without  signifi- 
cance are  ps  in  pseudo,  ce  in  homoeopathy  and 
oeconomic,  ce  and  rrh  in  haemorrhage,  Hon  instead 
of  shun  ;  and  is  it  not  less  gracious  and  less  logical 
to  find  fault  because  the  primitive  spelling  has 
not  changed  to  conform  to  our  modern  mispro- 
nunciation than  to  complain  because  the  lazy 
English  lips  and  tongue  have  slurred  their  orig- 
inal sounds  ? 

A  number  of  our  best  writers  now  drop  the 
Latin  syllable  «/,  added  by  false  analogy  to  such 
Greek  adjectives  as  chemic  and  microscopic,  and 
the  practice  may  become  general.  In  America 
we  have  discarded,  except  in  books  to  be  read  by 
the  British,  the  "u"  which  our  earlier  writers 
insinuated  into  "labor,"  "honor,"  and  other  sim- 
ilar Latin  words.  A  few  peculiarly  grotesque 
errors  of  spelling  may  be  sloughed  off";  we  may 
drop  the  apostrophe  and  the  apology  for  "tho'  "  ; 
we  may  universally  write  "plow"  instead  of 
"plough"  ;  we  may  prune  other  words  like  "cat- 
alogue," which  carry  unmeaning  and  unwar- 
ranted letters.  Finally,  the  spelling  reformers 
may  succeed  "in  mutilating  word-images  and  in 
destroying  linguistic  landmarks,  but  they  cannot 
make  two  letters  out  of  one  or  prevent  the  inev- 
itable confusion  of  attaching  different  significa- 
tions to  the  same  graphic  sign  "  (Benedict).  Xor 
can  they  contract  the  life-sphere  of  the  noble  old 
Saxon  words. 


246  WORD-COINAGE. 

Questions  in  English,  such  as  the  following, 
sometimes  come  up :  What  is  the  law  and  its 
cause  for  the  change  in  the  vowel  sound  in  the 
English  irregular  verb  system,  while  the  consonant 
base  remains  unchanged  ?  Which  vowel  changes 
do  we  use  to  express  past  tense  and  perfect  parti- 
ciple? How  many  of  the  prehistoric  conjugations 
are  represented  in  said  verb  system  ?  Name  and 
trace  them.  A  forthcoming  laook  by  Robert  W. 
Haire  will  throw  the  search-light  on  such  matters 
as  these. 

For  many  years  Mr.  Haire  has  been  working 
on  a  word-list  of  the  Aryan  elements  of  the  Eng- 
lish tongue,  arranged  under  the  Aryan  roots. 
This  monumental  work  ought  to  be  of  very  great 
service  to  English-speaking  people.  It  is  not  to 
be  a  work  of  literature,  in  the  accepted  sense, 
but  rather  an  examination  of  the  foundations — 
in  the  cellar  of  our  language,  so  to  speak.  Yet 
it  will  be  a  compendium  for  the  common  school- 
teacher, who  has  no  time  to  study  Latin,  Greek, 
or  Saxon,  and  to  whom  the  borrowed  words  from 
these  languages  are  mere  symbols  as  devoid  of 
meaning  as  the  symbols  of  algebra. 

"One  of  the  great  needs  of  the  day,  in  regard 
to  language,  is  the  purging  it  of  the  prurient  and 
pretentious  metaphors  which  have  broken  out  all 
over  it,  and  the  getting  plain  people  to  say  plain 
things  in  a  plain  way."  ^  If  there  had  been  no 
English    and  American  poets,   I  dare  not  think 

1  Kichard  Grant  White. 


J 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.       247 

what  our  lauoruao^e  would  be  like  now.  Thev 
have  kept  in  use  all  the  simple  words,  the  crisp 
words,  the  keen,  sharp  words,  the  small  words, 
that  mean  so  much.  Most  of  their  rhymes  are 
monosyllabic,  the  frequent  use  of  short  words 
fortunately  being  the  only  earnest  of  a  graceful 
swing  of  meter  and  of  a  perfect  rhythm.  Anglo- 
Saxon  primitives,  for  the  most  part,  have  fur- 
nished these  priceless  monosyllables. 

The  poets  have  been  a  wonderful  boon  to  the 
language.  The  scientists,  the  philosophers,  the 
historians,  the  learned  writers,  have  done  ten 
thousand  times  more  injury  to  English  than  the 
poets.  In  truth,  the  poets  have  done  the  most 
to  preserve  the  vigor,  the  strength,  the  beauty 
of  the  Anglo-Saxon  speech,  while  the  ponderous 
prose  pedants  have  done  the  most  to  spoil  our  lan- 
guage by  dragging  into  it  100,000  Latin  deriva- 
tives, chiefly  to  give  a  tinge  of  profundity  to  their 
writings.  They  have  made  the  language  turgid, 
roily,  unwieldy.  Let  us  study  more  zealously  the 
history  and  charms  of  our  own  language ;  let  us 
delve  into  old  English  and  Saxon  fields  and  their 
primal  wildwood  glories. 

It  is  hoped  that  at  no  distant  day  an  Inter- 
national Academy  will  be  established,  under  the 
direction  of  representative  men  of  England  and 
America, — not  a  clique  or  congress  of  log-rollers, 
— whose  decisions  on  disputed  questions  in  lan- 
guage and  whose  suggestions  would  be  accepted 
as  authoritative.  This  is  the  only  way  in  which 
we  ever  may  expect  to  raise  English  to  its  high- 


248  WORD-COINAGE. 

est  plane  of  excellence,  and  even  such  an  institu- 
tion would  have  its  drawbacks. 

Surely  the  English  language  should  not  be 
left  to  adventitious  factors  alone.  No  one  expects 
government  or  law  to  grow  out  of  the  genius  of 
the  people  without  conscious  effort;  no  more  is 
language  capable  of  developing  spontaneously  in 
the  right  direction.  It  needs  at  the  helm  men 
as  sharp  of  eye  and  as  unerring  of  instinct  as 
are  the  Indian  pilots  on  the  St.  Lawrence  River. 
Men  of  higher  mental  ability  and  training  than 
professional  politicians,  men  who  are  as  incorrui> 
tible  as  they  are  scholarly,  should  have  the  power 
to  determine  what  text-books  shall  be  used  in 
the  public  schools;  and  an  International  Academy 
of  Letters  is  needed,  if  for  no  other  purpose  than 
to  decide  between  the  claims  of  rival  publishers 
and  to  weigh  the  evidence  set  forth  by  warring 
professors  and  literary  critics.  Many  desirable 
forms  now  obsolete  should  be  restored,  definite 
meanings  assigned  to  many  words  of  vague  and 
of  disputed  signification,  new  words  proposed  to 
supply  deficiencies,  and  other  improvements  made 
by  a  conscious  process  of  construction. 

Professor  Brander  Mattliews  thinks  that  ^'in 
the  good  work  of  injecting  more  sense  into  our 
orthography,  as  in  the  other  good  work  of  still 
further  simplifying  our  grammar,  we  Americans 
will  have  to  take  the  lead.  It  is  only  by  ven- 
turing boldly  that  we  can  keep  our  language  up 
to  its  highest  efticiency.  It  is  for  us  to  hand  it 
down  to  our  children  fitted  for  the  service  it  is  to 


LANGUAGE  AND  CULTURE.        249 

render.  It  is  our  duty  to  help  it  to  draw  new  life 
and  power  from  every  source,  and  to  urge  along 
the  simplification  of  its  grammar  and  orthog- 
raphy." 

But  why  should  we  nut  haye  the  cooperation 
of  our  British  cousins,  Professor  Matthews  ?  Are 
not  Anglicisms  as  objectionable  as  American- 
isms? Why  should  we  fayor  a  purely  American 
English  ?  If  English  is  to  become  the  uniyersal 
language,  let  the  English-speaking  races,  whose 
essential  unity  was  neyer  so  marked  as  now,  do 
all  that  is  judicious  to  further  this  great  achieye- 
ment.  With  its  matchless  vocabulary  and  infi- 
nite resources,  it  stands  to-day  the  best  chance 
of  winning  its  way  wherever  mankind  is  pre- 
pared to  choose  between  it  and  other  civilized 
tongues. 

A  more  general  study  of  the  earlier  forms  of 
our  language  and  a  revival  of  some  of  the  short, 
apt,  stanch  Anglo-Saxon  words  used  centuries 
ago,  would  yield  the  most  beneficial  results  to 
the  English  literature  of  the  future.  Our  speech 
should  more  closely  fit  our  national  character 
and  high  destiny.  We  are  far  removed  from  the 
pagan  ideals  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans.  The 
cast  of  our  thought  is  difierent  from  theirs,  and 
if  we  think  through  or  in  words,  why  should  we 
appropriate  their  terms,  which  so  often  dilute  our 
conceptions?  The  Latin  races,  moreover,  tend 
to  socialism  and  anarchy,  because  they  have 
become  weak  and  dependent.  The  Anglo-Saxon 
race,  imbued  with  the  spirit  and  zest  of  liberty, 


250  WORD-COINAGE. 

is  pushing  forward,  because  it  is  self-reliant  and 
resourceful. 

Lord  Charles  Beresford  has  shown  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race  owns,  controls,  or  dominates 
nearly  three-fourths  of  the  earth's  surface  and 
over  one-fourth  of  its  population.  What  other 
race  ever  had  such  a  record  of  supremacy  ?  And 
what  will  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  be  in  the  year 
2000  A.  D.  at  the  same  rate  of  progression? 
Why,  it  will  own  the  earth  and  have  a  million 
good  words  in  its  vocabulary ;  and  probably 
some  with  a  little  of  the  old  Adam  still  clinging 
to  them  ;  for,  bright  as  the  prospect  seems,  the 
next  one  hundred  or  the  next  one  thousand  years 
will  not  mold  the  Anglo-Saxon  into  a  perfect  race 
or  the  English  into  a  perfect  language. 


CONCLUSION. 

The  subject  of  word-coiuage  is  so  cumulative 
that  there  really  is  no  end  to  it.  Since  this  book 
was  written  a  mass  of  fresh  material  has  come  to 
hand,  but  I  can  cull  from  it  only  here  and  there, 
presenting  in  random  notes  what  seems  most  in- 
teresting and  important.  There  are  some  verbal 
whimsies  which  may  be  inserted.  Other  words 
cited  mav  not  be  new  coinages,  but  are  unusual. 
Nor  can  any  one  be  sure  that  a  new  word,  a  new 
variant,  a  new  use  or  meaning,  supposedly  evolved 
by  a  certain  person,  has  not  been  employed  by 
others.  Such  verbal  coincidences  may  be  as 
common  as  the  coincidence  of  ideas ;  for  the  endur- 
ing words  spring  from  the  soul  of  the  race.  For 
instance,  Captain  Mahan's  word  "eventless"  was 
used  bv  George  William  Curtis  in  his  Prue  and 
I,  published  in  1856.  And  a  Chicago  critic,  in 
the  Inter-Ocean,  has  pointed  out  that  the  idea  of 
Edgar  Fawcett's  "congenials"  is  found  in  Pope's 
use  of  "congenial"  in  his  Epistle  to  Mr.  Jervas. 

Referring  to  the  Japanese  idea  of  duty,  their 
superstition  about  it,  etc.,  Osman  Edwards  calls 
this  ancient  training  of  theirs  dutiolatry,  in  his 
book,  Japanese  Plays  and  Playfellows. 

Dorothy  Dix  says:  "Good  manners  are  the 
preservaline  of  peace  and  concord." 

251 


252  WORD-COINAGE. 

Exactarian,  said  of  oue  who  is  exact,  is  pro- 
posed by  a  well-wisher  of  mine.  Bacon  said: 
''Reading  maketh  a  full  man,  conference  a  ready 
man,  writing,  an  exact  man."  The  same  friend 
suggests />iic,  made  on  the  analogy  of  cynic,  and 
meaning  one  who  is  finical. 

J.  C.  Barthoff,  associate  editor  of  The  Pilgrim, 
wonders  why  trusticate,  meaning  to  form  or  organ- 
ize into  a  trust,  on  the  model  of  syndicate,  has 
occurred  to  no  one  but  himself. 

Dr.  Franz  Hartmann  says:  "We  speak  of 
existence,  and  say  that  we  exist;  but  it  seems  that 
our  ancestors,  who  discovered  this  term,  knew 
more  about  its  true  meaning  than  we  do.  They 
used  to  call  things  by  their  right  names.  The 
term  'exist,'  from  the  Latin  ex,  out,  and  est,  is, 
evidently  means  'to  be  out.'  Out  of  what?  Evi- 
dently did  the  things  which  exist  come  out  of  the 
unmanifested  state  ;  they  were  contained  as  ideas 
in  the  universal  mind  and  projected  into  outward 
existence.  Thus  the  word  '  existence '  suggests  a 
whole  system  of  philosophy  and  gives  us  a  key  to 
the  mystery  of  creation  "  (see  p.  34). 

"  The  Chrysocracy  of  the  United  States "  was 
the  headline  of  an  article  in  the  New  York 
Herald  of  April  28,  1901,  referring  to  the  mil- 
lionaires in  our  country.  The  word  is  obviously 
a  variant  of  the  name  of  Chrysostom,  who  "talked 
gold."  It  was  made  by  Oliver  ^YendeIl  Holmes, 
but  plutocracy,  meaning  the  same  thing,  has  been 
more  generally  adopted. 

John   H.  Girdner,   M.  D.,  is  the   author  of  a 


CONCLUSION.  253 

book  which  he  calls  Newyorhitis,  by  no  means  a 
medical  book,  yet  it  treats  of  some  of  the  pecu- 
liarities of  the  New  Yorker. 

Julien  Gordon  (Mrs.  Van  Rensselaer  Cruger) 
wrote  this  sentence :  "  He  had  seen  a  photograph, 
slightly  faded  and  more  or  less  speckled,  ornatiwj 
for  four  years  his  companion's  dressing-table."  In 
The  Wage  of  Character  she  says :  "  This  incon- 
gruous melange  was  a  source  of  constant  amuse- 
ment to  Vincent,  who  could  trone  among  them  to 
his  complete  satisfaction,  striking  terror  to  their 
simple  hearts." 

Clinton  Scollard,  in  a  poem,  ''  The  Dancing  of 
Suleima,"  has  this  line  : 

The  fountain  spuriled^  with  mellow  fret. 

Edgar  Saltus  has  used  the  word  encounter  able. 

One  reason  perhaps,  and  a  chief  one,  why 
fashionable  people  in  this  country  have  taken  up 
the  game  of  golf  so  zealously  is  because  it  pro- 
vides them  with  a  new  lingo — many  sporting 
technical  terms  which  have  a  smart  sound  to 
them. 

In  Pendennis,  chapter  xxii.,  Thackeray  speaks 
of  "soldatesque  manoeuvers."  It  will  be  seen 
that  the  novelist  here  tacked  on  an  Italian  suffix 
to  a  German  word.  In  the  same  book  Thackeray 
used  colloquially  the  term  "perfectionate." 

In  a  short  story  Louise  Betts  Edwards  used  the 
word  forlornity. 

Bric-a-brac  was  a  neologism  in  France  when 
Balzac  wrote  Le  Cousin  Pons. 


254  WORD-COINAGE. 

Robert  Herrick:   "He  smiled  delpli'icallyy 

Speaking  of  dendral  (see  p.  103),  the  United 
States  Department  of  Agriculture  has,  in  the 
Division  of  Forestry,  what  it  calls  dendrologists. 

Nixon  Waterman,  the  poet,  fears  he  has  not 
"  brained  "  any  new  thing  worthy  of  a  place  in 
this  volume. 

W.  D.  Howells  makes  one  of  his  characters 
say,  in  effect,  that  there  ought  to  be  some  other 
word  that  doesn't  accuse  a  man's  sanity  in  the 
degree  "hallucinations"  does — that  is,  when  the 
man  apparently  shows  no  other  signs  of  an  un- 
sound mind. 

TJie  greatest  ivord-coiner  in  the  Bible  ims  Paul! 
He  coined  nearly  600  Greek  words  in  his  writings 
in  the  New  Testament. 

Rev.  Edward  Taylor,  of  Binghamton,  N.  Y., 
in  an  impromptu  address  (February,  1901)  coined 
the  word  possumist — one  capable  of  power,  one  to 
whom  is  possible  the  greatest  strength.  He  spoke 
of  the  possumist  as  being  of  more  account  than 
either  the  optimist  or  the  pessimist.  The  use  of 
this  word  in  an  extempore  speech  was  a  fine 
instance  of  swift  intellection. 

Mr.  Howells  does  not  hesitate  to  use  the  word 
spilth,  as  "spilth  of  blood,"  marked  obsolete  in 
the  dictionaries.  Certain  writers  have  tried  to 
force  coohh,  as  an  antonym  of  warmth. 

Eva  Best:  "As  to  the  word  'theory,'  allow  me 
to  say  that  it  has  its  origin  in  an  old  Sanscrit 
word  dhya,  meaning  to  meditate,  to  think.  The 
word  theater  is  also  derived  from  this  word  dhya, 


CONCLUSION.  255 

and  it  really  means,  in  this  sense,  to  stand  off  and 
view — see — any  spectacle  or  pageant  or  display 
going  on  before  one's  eyes.  Now,  he  who  has  a 
'theory,'  who  'theorizes,'  in  imagination  views 
that  of  which  he  thinks  as  a  passing  show ;  sees 
the  whole  subject  before  his  mind's  eye,  and  from 
the  picture  of  all  the  parts  thus  presented  he 
forms  his  'theory,'  or  what  seems  to  him  the  right 
idea  of  anything  not  as  yet  proved  by  being  put 
in  practice."  But,  Mrs.  Best  might  have  added, 
he  may  be  ^^■rong. 

Rev.  Alfred  A.  Wright,  of  Boston,  uses  his 
own  word  distinctionary  in  his  discourses  some- 
times, meaning  the  distinctions  in  words  and  mean- 
ings. 

Some  one  has  pointed  out  how  interesting  it  is 
to  note  the  influence  of  the  art  of  printing  in 
preventing  arbitrary  changes  in  the  formation  of 
words.  This  is  particularly  true  of  those  begin- 
ning with  a  vowel.  Thus  in  olden  times  the 
French  word  naperon,  a  table-cloth,  was  adopted 
as  an  English  word  meaning  a  garment  to  pro- 
tect the  clothes  of  a  person  engaged  in  any  kind 
of  work.  In  the  spoken  language  a  naperon 
ultimately  became  an  apron.  Another  example 
of  common  words  which  originally  began  with 
the  letter  "n"  is  orange.  In  its  first  English 
form  it  was  norange,  but  a  uorange  in  time  became 
orange.  Again,  the  name  of  the  poisonous  snake, 
adder,  formerly  began  with  an  "n"  (nadder),  as 
it  does  to-day  in  nearly  every  language  other 
than  English. 


256  WORD-COINAGE. 

The  word  "gas,"  says  Professor  William  Kara* 
say,  "  was  not  invented  until  Van  Helmont  devised 
it  to  designate  various  kinds  of  airs  he  observed. 

In  an  admirable  notice  of  a  book  by  Edith 
Wharton,  Ellen  Burns  Sherman  observes:  "The 
power  to  'depolarize'  words  and  phrases  from 
their  hackneyed  associations  is  a  gift  that  is  none 
too  common  among  authors  whose  plots  are  rea- 
sonably original.  Certain  adjectives  become  so 
wedded  by  usage  to  their  nouns  that  few  literary 
courts  will  grant  them  a  divorce,  however  weary 
they  may  have  become  of  each  other.  Conse- 
quently people  go  on  writing  about  'the  mazy 
waltz,'  'a  glowing  tribute,'  'the  happy  couple' 
(made  so  by  an  'officiating  clergyman'),  and  a 
thousand  other  bethumbed  phrases,  till  gradually 
a  large  part  of  the  dictionary  gets  done  up  into 
little  dried  bouquets  of  faded  phrases,  coupled 
with  nouns  and  adjectives,  verbs  and  adverbs, 
with  which  the  mantels  of  literature  are  adorned. 
So  we  should  feel  grateful  to  an  author  like  j\Irs. 
Wharton,  who  takes  down  from  their  figurative 
mantels  some  of  these  dried  bouquets  of  literary 
grasses  and  substitutes  for  them  fresh  and  fragrant 
blossoms  culled  from  the  pied  meadows  of  fancy. 

"In  this  gift  of  weaving  new  patterns  upon 
the  same  old  verbal  looms  that  have  been  used 
for  centuries,  and  in  a  certain  chaste  aloofness  of 
style,  Mrs.  Wharton  is  related  to  Mrs.  Meynell, 
though  the  former  has  a  far  wider  and  deeper 
scope  than  the  English  essayist.  Mrs.  Meynell's 
work    is   a    kind    of  literary  frost-work,  and  so 


CONCLUSION.  257 

lacking  in  all  suggestion  of  ruddy  caloric  proper- 
ties that  one  fancies  that  only  a  colorless  ichor 
would  flow  if  her  essays  could  be  probed  with  a 
literary  lancet.  In  the  works  of  Mrs.  Wharton, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  reader  is  conscious  of 
strong,  healthy  pulsations  of  feeling  under  her 
most  restrained  passages.  In  The  Moving  Flncjer 
there  is,  ethically,  a  tonic  effect  which  affects  the 
reader  like  a  breeze  wafted  down  from  a  grove 
of  mountain  pines.  One  is  taken  into  an  atmos- 
phere vivified  by  moral  oxygenation,  and  the 
sensation  is  a  most  delightful  one  after  reading 
some  of  the  works  of  other  authors  who  lead  their 
readers  into  malarial  swamps  and  bogs." 

I  find  this  in  an  editorial  in  Scribnei^s  Maga- 
zine: "There  is  one  trait  that  belongs  in  common 
to  every  artistic  effort  of  Americans,  and  that  is 
the  cerebrality,  if  the  word  mav  pass,  of  such 
effort." 

Some  recent  examples  of  nouns  turned  into 
verbs  are  furnished  by  the  English  publication, 
Notes  and  Queries,  as  follows : 

To  gregory — to  gibbet,  to  hang,  from  three 
successive  hangmen  of  the  name  of  Gregory. 
Hence  the  "Gregorian  Tree,"  a  name  for  the 
gallows. 

To  grimthorpe — to  restore  an  ecclesiastical  edi- 
fice badly — e.  g.,  the  west  front  of  St.  Alban's 
Abbey  and  its  window,  when  taken  in  hand  by 
Lord  Grimthorpe ;  a  word  first  used  in  The  Athe- 
nceum  of  July  23,  1892. 

To  lush — the  slang  word  "lush,"  meaning  beer 
17 


258  WORD-COINAGE. 

or  other  intoxicating  liquor,  is  au  abl^reviatiou 
of  Lushingtou,  the  name  of  a  Loudon  brewer.. 
Its  adoption  in  this  sense  was  perhaps  facilitated 
by  the  fact  of  Shakespeare  having  used  the  old 
adjective  ''lush,"  meaning  succulent,  rich,  luxu- 
riant (T/ie  TempesU  ii.,  1)  : 

' '  How  lush  and  lusty  the  grass  looks  !     How  green  ! ' ' 

"They  didn't  look  like  regular  Lushingtons  at 
all." — Mayhew,  London  Labour  and  London 
Poor. 

To  sandwich — to  place  one  object  between  two 
others  of  a  different  kind,  character,  etc.  The 
Earl  of  Sandwich,  a  famous  admiral  who  served 
under  both  Cromwell  and  Charles  II.,  is  said  to 
have  been  the  inventor  of  the  sandwich  composed 
of  two  pieces  of  bread  and  a  thin  slice  of  ham 
or  other  meat. 

To  simpson — to  adulterate  milk  by  adding 
water  thereto,  from  a  dairyman  of  this  name  who 
in  the  sixties  was  prosecuted  on  this  account. 

Some  of  the  special  terms  used  in  Wall  street 
and  their  meanings  include : 

Averaging — buying  or  selling  stocks  on  a 
scale. 

Bear — one  who  has  sold  stocks  and  who  gains 
by  a  decline. 

Big  board — the  New  York  Stock  Exchange. 

Blind  pool — a  close  corporation  ;  one  which 
does  not  issue  any  statement  of  expenses  or  earn- 


CONCLUSION.  259 

Block — a  number  of  shares  bought  or  sold  in 
a  lump. 

Boom — the  opposite  of  a  slump. 

Bottom — the  lowest  point  or  price  reached  by 
a  stock. 

Break — a  sudden  decline  caused  by  a  strin- 
gency in  the  money  market. 

Bucketing — to  execute  orders  in  stocks  without 
dealing  on  any  regular  exchange. 

Bulge — the  upward  movement  of  a  stock. 

Bull — one  who  has  bought  stocks,  expecting 
an  advance. 

Carrying — to  hold  a  stock  with  the  expecta- 
tion of  an  advance. 

Collateral — any  security  given  in  pawn  when 
money  is  borrowed. 

Covering — buying  stock  to  satisfy  a  short  sale 
on  the  day  of  delivery. 

Crazy  market — one  which  fluctuates  violently 
without  apparent  reason. 

Hunch — a  tip  based  on  one's  instinct  or  impres- 
sion. 

Insider — one  who  causes  a  movement  in  the 
stock  market. 

Irish  dividend — an  assessment  upon  stock- 
holders. 

Lamb — a  new  speculator  without  knowledge 
of  the  market  or  its  methods. 

Leading — to  buy  stocks  heavily. 

Long — to  have  bought  for  a  rise. 

On  'Change — the  floor  of  the  Stock  Exchange. 

Piker — a  small  speculator. 


260  WORD-COINAGE. 

Plunger — one  who  deals  heavily  in  stocks, 
taking  great  risks. 

Pool — the  stock  and  money  contributed  by  a 
clique  to  carry  through  a  corner. 

Scalping — buying  or  selling  stocks  on  slight 
fluctuations. 

Short — one  who  has  sold  stocks  for  a  decline. 

Slump — a  sudden  decline  in  the  price  of 
stocks. 

Squeeze — a  sudden  movement  of  the  market 
which  forces  the  bulls  or  bears  to  close  out  their 
stocks  at  a  loss. 

Tip — private  information  in  advance  of  the 
movement  of  a  stock. 

Top — the  highest  quotation  of  a  stock. 

Unloading — to  sell  out  stocks  which  have  been 
carried  for  some  time. 

Watering — to  increase  the  quantity  of  a  stock 
without  improving  its  quality. 

Writing  in  Harper's  M'agaziyie,  Mr.  Ho  wells 
uses  the  word  aijocryphers.  Also  this :  "  The 
events  of  the  Summer  Islands  are  few,  and  none 
of  the  order  of  athletics  between  teams  of  the 
army  and  navy,  and  what  may  be  called  socie- 
tetics,  have  happened  in  that  past  enchanted  fort- 
night." 

H.'M.  Alden:  "We  are  so  fixed  in  our  fine 
cosmicity,"  etc. 

In  Papa  Bouchard  ]Molly  Elliot  Seawell  says : 
"This  cataclysm  consisted  of  the  simultaneous 
departure,  or  rather  levanting,  of  the  entire  mas- 
culine   element."     In   the   same   story  she  uses 


I 


CONCLUSION.  261 

debonairness  and  larkij — "and  if  Victor  led  the 
larky  life  you  so  unjustly  suspect  him  of,"  etc. 

Eugene  Wood,  in  a  short  story,  has  this  :  "  'My 
child  I  my  child!'  peacocked  Mrs.  O' Conor  from 
the  head  of  the  stairs,  followed  by  the  sedater 
flither." 

To  give  in  detail  recent  word-coinage  in  mat- 
ters of  science  and  technics  would  be  equiva- 
lent almost  to  writing  a  history  of  modern  scien- 
tific and  technical  evolution,  and  so  I  have  con- 
fined myself  chiefly  to  words  used  in  imaginative 
work.  F.  M.  F.  Cazin  calls  my  attention  to  an 
expression  which,  though  of  scientific  importance, 
indicates  only  an  imaginary  thing.  "Average 
section^'  is  the  resulting  section  when  a  volume  of 
irregular  form  and  a  stated  length  is  transformed 
into  a  volume  of  regular  form,  and  uniform  section 
of  the  same  stated  length.  The  action  of  a  ship 
in  continuous  displacement  after  initial  immer- 
sion cannot  be  fully  explained  or  mathematically 
expressed  without  the  use  of  Mr.  Cazin's  term. 

Holman  F.  Day  has  this  in  one  of  his  verses : 

'•You  could  hear  the  c-ronching-cranchiyig  of  his 
swashing  spike-sole  boots." 

The  editor  of  a  Philadelphia  journal  says : 
"  The  storiest  (meaning  the  story-teller  or  nov- 
elist) has  his  opportunity  to  shame  formal  history 
by  the  exactitude  of  his  picture." 

Dr.  John  H.  Girdner  and  others  use  the  phrase, 
"pracfiser  of  surgery,"  and  why  isn't  this  better 
than  practitioner? 


262  AVORD-COINAGE. 

Duncan  Smith,  in  a  translation  of  fragment  22 
from  the  Greek  of  Simouides  of  Ceos,  has  this 
line  : 

O  Pather  Zeus,  to  usward  change  thy  will. 

Several  exponents  of  the  so-called  New  Thought, 
among  them  Henry  Wood,  use  the  mysterious  col- 
location, at-oiie-ment. 

Edgar  Saltus,  in  a  short  story,  says  :  "  Barring 
two  others,  the  rest  of  the  party  interested  me  but 
mediocrally. 

Why  not  ordinarily  say  haps  for  happenings  ? 
The  editor  of  Harper's  Magazine  and  others  have 
so  used  it. 

Edith  Wharton  speaks  of  a  ''  skyey  task." 

Marguerite  Merington,  in  A  Gainshoroarjli 
Lady,  makes  an  adjective  of  chance — chancy; 
also  uses  dalnt  for  dainty. 

In  an  article  Henry  Holt  mentions  "  bratify- 
ing  spectacles." 

In  a  recent  editorial  the  New  York  World 
said :  "  Milady  has  made  up  her  mind  that  she 
had  as  much  right  to  after-danj  liberty  as 
Milord." 

In  a  short  story  William  Bulfin  wrote  :  "  The 
creamy,  silky  fleeces  of  the  merinos  rolled  their 
greasy  folds  on  the  boarded  floor  of  the  vast  shed 
as  they  fell  under  the  snick-snicking  of  a  hundred 
pairs  of  shears."  • 

Carlyle,  in  his  essay  on  Boswell,  used  the  word 
"gigmanity,"  which  has  been  defined  as  a  sar- 
castic synonym  for  pseudo-respectability. 


CONCLUSION.  263 

The  literary  critic,  Alfred  ^Mathews,  has  al- 
luded to  the  "  paeanesque  swagger  "  of  a  certain 
book. 

William  S.  Walsh  says  :  "  When  a  novel  is 
turned  into  a  play,  you  say  that  the  novel  has 
been  dramatized.  There  is  no  analogous  word 
for  the  turning  of  a  play  into  a  novel.  Yet  the 
word  is  needed,  because  the  thing,  though  un- 
usual, is  not  unknown  to  literature. 
The  problem  now  presented  .  .  .  is  to  find  a 
neat,  expressive,  and  intelligible  word  that  will 
be  a  fit  corollary  to  'dramatize,'  and  will  describe 
the  act  of  making  a  novel  out  of  a  drama.  '  Fic- 
tionize'  is  hopeless."  Many  writers  have  used 
"  novelize"  in  default  of  anything  better. 

Here  is  a  little  sensible  philology  from  the  pen 
of  the  President  of  the  United  States — Theodore 
Roosevelt :  "  In  the  books  the  bobcat  is  always 
called  a  lynx,  which  it  is,  of  course ;  but  when- 
ever a  hunter  or  trapper  speaks  of  a  lynx  (which 
he  usually  calls  'link,'  feeling  dimly  that  the 
other  pronunciation  is  a  plural)  he  means  a  lu- 
civee.  Bobcat  is  a  good  distinctive  name,  and  it 
is  one  which  I  think  the  book  people  might  with 
advantage  adopt ;  for  wildcat,  which  is  the  name 
given  to  the  small  lynx  in  the  East,  is  already 
preempted  by  the  true  wildcat  of  Europe. 
Like  all  people  of  European  descent  who  have 
gone  into  strange  lands,  we  Americans  have 
christened  our  wild  beasts  with  a  fine  disregard 
for  their  specific  and  generic  relations.  We  called 
the  bison  '  buftalo '  as  long  as  it  existed,  and  we 


264  WORD-COINAGE. 

still  call  the  big  stag  an  'elk,'  instead  of  using 
for  it  the  excellent  term  wapiti ;  on  the  other 
hand,  to  the  true  elk  and  the  reindeer  we  gave 
the  new  names  of  moose  and  caribou — excellent 
names,  too,  by  the  way.  The  prong  buck  is 
always  called  antelope,  though  it  is  not  an  ante- 
lope at  all ;  and  the  white  goat  is  not  a  goat ; 
while  the  distinctive  name  of  '  big-horn  '  is  rarely 
used  for  the  mountain  sheep.  In  most  cases,  how- 
ever, it  is  mere  pedantry  to  try  to  upset  popular 
custom  in  such  matters  ;  and  where,  as  with  the 
bobcat,  a  perfectly  good  name  is  taken,  it  would 
be  better  for  scientific  men  to  adopt  it.  I  may 
add  that  in  this  particular  of  nomenclature  we 
are  no  worse  sinners  than  other  people.  The 
English  in  Ceylon,  the  English  and  Dutch  in 
South  Africa,  and  the  Spanish  in  South  America 
have  all  shown  the  same  genius  for  misnaming 
beasts  and  birds." 

A  well-known  woman  writer  sometimes  uses 
bloivth  for  bloom,  and  I  have  noticed  that  she  is 
not  the  only  one  who  so  employs  it. 

The  late  Senator  Dr.  Kyle,  of  South  Dakota, 
described  himself  as  an  Indocmf,  that  is,  he 
was  Independent  and  a  Democrat — a  little  of 
each.  At  one  time — some  ten  years  ago — the  es- 
tablishment of  an  Indocratic  party  was  seriously 
proposed,  but  came  to  nothing. 

The  following  is  condensed  from  a  newspaper 
article :  When,  not  long  ago,  a  certain  young  scion 
of  French  nobility  began  squandering  his  wife's 
property  without  rhyme  or   reason,  the  doctors 


CONCLUSION.  265 

were  asked  to  tell  what  was  the  matter  with  him. 
They  refused  to  believe  it  was  just  old-fashioned 
depravity  or  profligacy ;  but  they  proved  the 
case  with  sufficient  pathologic  care  by  taking 
the  Greek  word  "  Coeu"  meaning  "  common," 
and  another  Greek  word,  "  esthesi.%"  meaning  taste 
(from  which  we  get  esthetic),  and  putting  them 
together  thus,  coenesthesi-%  which  they  defined  as 
a  determination  to  communism.  Thus  science 
steps  in  to  spare  the  feelings  of  a  nobleman  with 
a  tendency  to  give  away  things,  especially  things 
belonging  to  somebody  else. 

Carolyn  Wells  is  responsible  for  iviseaereage. 

Says  a  New  York  literary  journal :  "  One  of 
the  things  one  wishes  one  had  said,  and  which  one 
might  so  easily  have  said  after  some  one  else  has 
said  it,  is  found  in  the  opening  chapter  of  John 
Kendrick  Bangs'  clever  story,  The  Enchanted 
Type-writer.     In  explaining  his  use  of  the  word 

*  monkey '  as  a  verb,  Mr.  Bangs  admits  that  it 
may  savor  somewhat  of  what  a  friend  of  his  calls 
the    'English  slanguage,'   as  distinguished  from 

*  Andrew  Language.'  The  difference  could  hardly 
have  been  more  neatly  expressed,  yet  it  is  obvi- 
ously so  easy  to  say." 

John  W.  Foster,  ex-Secretary  of  State,  in  show- 
ing the  modem  origin  of  the  word  diplomacy, 
points  out  that  it  is  "  derived  from  the  word  dij)- 
loma,  the  significance  of  which  grew  out  of  the 
practice  of  sovereigns  of  the  medij?eval  period,  fol- 
lowing the  Roman  method  of  preservation  of  im- 
portant  documents,  in   having  their  royal  war- 


266  WORD-COIXAGE. 

rants,  decrees,  and  finally  their  treaties  carefully 
inscribed  on  parchments  or  diplomas." 

Some  writer  whom  I  cannot  identify  has  given 
this  origin  to  the  word  tantalize :  A  long  time 
ago  a  wicked  king  named  Tantalus  lived  in 
Phrygia,  and  in  order  to  punish  him  the  gods  put 
him  in  a  large  tank  almost  full  of  water.  Near 
him  grew  trees  loaded  with  delicious  fruits,  and 
the  boughs  were  almost  within  his  reach.  But 
every  time  he  tried  to  pluck  an  orange  or  a  pome- 
granate the  limbs  of  the  trees  would  wave  beyond 
his  grasp  and  he  could  not  relieve  his  hunger. 
Whenever  he  bent  his  head  to  drink  of  the  water 
that  surrounded  him  it  would  shrink  away  from 
his  lips,  and  he  never  could  touch  it.  From  the 
name  Tantalus  we  get  our  word  ''  tantalize."  To 
show  some  good  thing  just  ahead  and  yet  keep  the 
hopeful  person  from  reaching  it  is  the  worst  kind 
of  teasing.     It  is  really  tantalizing. 

A  Philadelphia  dramatic  critic  recently  spoke 
of  the  underdoneness  of  a  certain  play. 

Flora  Bigelow  Dodge  has  given  us  hideos- 
ities. 

It  is  rightly  contended  that  the  term  "  wireless 
telegraphy  "  is  not  only  too  long  and  cumbersome, 
but  a  misnomer  as  well.  Various  persons  have 
tried  to  think  of  a  short,  pronounceable  name,  of 
irreproachable  linguistic  antecedents,  and  such 
as  to  be  acceptable  to  those  speaking  languages 
other  than  English.  Among  the  names  sug- 
gested thus  far  have  been,  Marconi grapliy,  cdmog- 
raphy,     etherography,    ethergraphy,     conigrapliyy 


I 


CONCLUSIOX.  267 

syntography,    etc.      Doubtless    some    term    much 
better  thau  any  of  these  will  be  found. 

And  DOW,  kind  reader,  let  us  part  with  an 
amiable  understanding,  if  jwssible.  If  I  agree 
with  you  that  really  no  great  gain  to  the  lan- 
guage seems  to  have  resulted  from  any  of  our 
authors  cited  in  this  book,  will  you  not  admit 
that  the  study  has  been  both  interesting  and 
profitable — in  that  you  see  words  in  a  new  and 
more  potential  light  ?  For  the  shortcomings  of 
the  work  I  ask  your  indulgence  ;  and  to  all  who 
have  rendered  me  assistance  I  feel  most  deeply 
indebted. 


i 


INDEX. 


All  new  words  and  variants  are  indicated  by  italics. 


Abutter,  132. 

Academy,    An    International, 
247',  248. 

The  Flemish,  214. 

The  French,  53. 

The  London,  211. 
Adams,  Hon.  Charles  Francis, 
226. 

John,  129. 
Ade,  George,  170. 
Adjective,  the  tired,  49. 
Adler,  Dr.  Felix,  .52. 
Advice  and  consent,  129. 
Affective,  123. 
AJter-dary,  262. 
Agnostic.  67. 
Agronomy,  70. 
Agrotechny,  70. 
Alamagoozilum,  197. 
Alden.  Henry  Mills,  260. 

William  L.,  175,  176. 
Aldrich.  Thomas  Bailey,  95. 
Alexander  the  Great,  16. 
Allen,  James  Lane,  174. 

Professor   Thomas  J.,  141, 
229,  2.30. 
Alphabet,  the  Roman,  243,  244. 
Altitudinoiis,  106. 
Altrospection,  69. 
Altruria,  88,  147. 
Alula.  122. 
Arnbiguify,  144. 

American  Dialect  Society.  196. 
American    Philological  'Asso- 
ciation, 241. 
Americanese,  205. 
Americanisms,  192,  249. 
Amerieaphiles,  213. 
AmerirMphobes,  213. 
Analogy,  162. 

Andrews,  Professor  E.  Benja- 
min, 87. 


Anecdotage,  104. 
Anemic  words,  85. 
Anglo-Saxon,  222,  223. 

adjectives,  14. 

intinitives,  13. 
Anthropocentric,  100. 
Antres,  122. 
Apocryphers,  260. 
Appleton,  Thomas,  40. 
Archteologv,  8. 
Archer,  Wi'lliam,  16,  36,  227. 
Arden,  In  the  Forest  of,  28. 
Arful,  14. 
Aristotle,  47, 179. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  94,  228. 
Artine,  209. 
Aryan  roots,  3. 
A  Sentimental  Journey,  40. 
Asiotic,  84. 

Atherton,  Gertrade,  90. 
Atlantic  Monthly,  78,  79, 148. 
Atmography,  266. 
At-one-ment,  262. 
Aureole,  9.3. 
Aido-drome,  119. 
Autolatry,  98. 
Automobilically,  90. 
Auto-typed,  119. 
Ayres,  Alfred,  105. 

Bacon.  Francis,  41,  228. 
Bailev.  Professor  L.  H.,  116. 
Ball,  Sir  Robert.  232. 
Balmyann-s,  211. 
Bamboozle,  178. 
Bangs,  John  Kendrick,  265. 
Barnard,  Charles,  152. 
Barnum.  P.  T.,  193. 
Barr.  Amelia  E.,  149. 

Robert,  153. 
Barrie,  J.  M.,204. 
Bartlett,  John  Russell,  163. 

269 


270 


INDEX. 


Bashkirtseff,  Marie,  29. 

Beers,  Professor  Henry  A.,  103. 

Begraffed,  219. 

Belknap,  Jeremy,  129. 

Bell,  Lillian,  146. 

Ben  Bolt,  79. 

Benedict,  Dr.  A.  L.,  243,  245. 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  214. 

Benton,  Joel,  103.* 

Beresford,  Lord  Charles,  250. 

Berg,  55. 

Best,  Eva,  254. 

Betweenlties,  106. 

Bibliocranks,  36. 

Bibliomaniac,  36. 

Biblioparnoiacs,  36. 

Blbliophrodisiacs,  36. 

Bibliotics,  72,  77. 

Bicycler,  132. 

Big  words,  214,  215,  216. 

Bilbo,  219. 

Bilderback,  99. 

Billings,  Josh,  189, 

Billiwinking,  219. 

Biltong,  55. 

Bindery,  131. 

Birmingham,  108. 

Bismarck,  216. 

Blanks,  132. 

Blind  Man's  Alley,  84. 

Block,  132. 

Blockheads,  57. 

Blowth,  264. 

Blnedomer,  211. 

Bobcat,  263. 

Boc,  57. 

Bog,  57. 

Bogus,  56. 

Boissier,  Gaston,  53,  54. 

Bom-bom,  62. 

Bookery,  131. 

Boom,  181. 

Borey,  207. 

Bosc,  93. 

Boss.  129. 

Boston  brown  bread,  133. 

words  coined  in,  126-133. 
Bostonian  Society,  127. 
Boswell,  James,  S. 
Boycott,  64. 

Bradley,  Sarah  Guernsey,  140. 
Braid,  Dr.  James,  139. 
Braird,  122. 


Br6al,  Professor  Michel,  v,  5, 

11,  14,  196,  239. 
Bree-reeing,  114. 
Breme,  14. 
Brick,  179. 

Brinton,  Professor  D.  G.,  75. 
Briscoe,  Margaret  Sutton,  152. 
Brit,  124. 
Brolliant,  219. 
Bronteized,  115. 
Broodle,  88. 

Browning,  Robert,  28,  102. 
Brugmaim,  Carl,  44. 
Brummagem,  107. 
Bubble,  126. 
Buck,  Gertrude,  46. 
Buffon,  40. 
Bulfin,  William,  262. 
Bulgaroons,  219. 
Bull-dogged,  140. 
Bullv,  60. 
Bum'foozled,  203. 
Buole,  60. 

Burdette,  Robert  J.,  98,  99. 
Burke,  Edmund,  2. 
Burns,  Robert,  29. 
Burroughs,  John,  25.  35, 100. 
Burrowes,  Rev.  Dr.,  7. 
Burton,  Professor  Richard,  83, 

140,  199. 
Bushed,  196. 
Byron,  Lord,  110. 

Cable,  George  W.,  147,  173. 

Cad,  60. 

Caesar,  16, 107. 

Caird,  Dr.  Edward.  195. 

California,  words  from,  181. 

Cambridge  University,  5. 

Cantankerous,  201. 

Card,  Professor,  118. 

Carlvle,  Thomas,  39,  46,  171. 

Carlvlese.  43. 

Carroll,  Louis  (Dr.  Dodgson), 

206. 
Catastrified,  219. 
Catullus,  179. 
Caucus,  128. 
Causer,  142. 
Centrogenesis,  117. 
Century  Dictionary,  3,  79,  95, 

100,  152.  181,  235. 
Cerebrality,  257. 


J 


INDEX. 


271 


Chancy,  262. 

Changes  in   language,  190,  240. 

Charles  V.,  217. 

Chaser,  183. 

Chaucer,  Geoflfry,  201,  233. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  i. 

Chinese,  62,  63. 

Chivy,  106. 

Chow-chow,  62. 

Chromo,  132. 

Chrysocracy,  252. 

Chumlock,  103. 

Chuuies,  195. 

Churchill,  Winston,  153. 

Cinch,  180. 

Cinematograph,  212. 

Claneocracy,  120. 

Clapp,  Henry  Austin,  88. 

Clarid,  122. 

Cleopatra,  236. 

Cleveland,  Grover,  63. 

Closet-verse,  102. 

Coaster,  127. 

Coco,  56. 

Coenesthesis,  265. 

Coleridge,  Samuel  Taylor,  95. 

College  slang,  186. 

Colloquialisms,  193,  200. 

Combination,  the  wonders  of, 

238. 
Commandeer,  55. 
Commando,  55. 
Commonwealth,  129. 
Cnrn  m  unal-wtensity ,  117. 
Commute,  130. 
Cornpendence,  111. 
Com  pendency,  111. 
Composition  of  English  words, 

225. 
Compound  words,  11;  225,  226. 
Comprompo,  198. 
Comte,  Auguste,  35. 
Conferentia,  68. 
Confliimtion,212. 
Congenials,  82. 
Con'plomerafion,  86. 
Conigraphy,  266. 
Conservative.  37. 
Constructive  power  of  English, 

223. 
Conteke,'201. 
Contraversion.,  ^8. 
Converse,  C.  C.,105. 


Coof,  198. 

Cook,  Kev.  Joseph,  67, 

Coolth,  254. 

Coosters,  197. 

Cope,  E.  D.,  75,  76. 

Copyosis,  143. 

Corder,  131. 

Corijty-U'hifty,  101. 

Cornwall,  Barry,  78. 

Oorogna,  60. 

Cosmicity,  260. 

Cosmopathic,  137. 

Craddock,  Charles  Egbert  (Miss 

Murfree),  201. 
Crane,  Stephen,  32,  189. 
Crawford,  F.  Marion,  99, 148,173. 
Crebcaking,  113. 
Crescive,  122. 
Crisping.  95,  96. 
Croker,  John  Wilson,  8. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  172. 
Cronching-cranching ,  261. 
Crotion,  211. 

Cidtural-deoeneracy,  117. 
Cidturine,  209. 
Curtiosity,  38. 
Curtis,  George  William,  251. 

Isabel  Gordon,  143. 
"  Cussedness,"  87. 
Cust,  Mrs.  Henry,  v. 
Cuttage,  116. 
Cyamologer,  133. 
Cyamologist,  133. 
Cyamology,  133. 
Cyamomystical,  134. 
Cyamophagi,  134. 
Cyamophagist,  134. 
Cyamophifist,  134. 
I  Cynophiles,  83. 

'  Dab,  194. 
!  Daint,  262. 

Danes,  228. 
I  Dante,  28. 

Danton,  Jacques-George,  226. 

Davies,  T.  L.  O.,  60. 

Dav,  Holman  F.,  261. 

Day-down,  198. 

Deavihropomorphization,  95. 

Decline  of  Greek  study,  229. 

r>e  feminization,  115. 
1  Deficiencies    in    the    English 
I  language,  191,  237. 


272 


INDEX. 


De  Foe,  Daniel,  41. 

De  Forei>t,  J.  W.,  U9. 

Deluud,  Margaret,  150, 

Delphicalhj,  254. 

Delta,  85. 

De  Mille,  James,  34,  225,  226. 

Democrat,  lol. 

Dcndral,  103. 

Denscnimh  78. 

Ihpcndablc,  114. 

Depreciating,  128. 

Dt'provincializtd,  116. 

Dcviator,  115. 

Dt'.i:tro-ccrebriiI,  137. 

Bialcctophobc.<:,  104. 

Dialedophobin,  104. 

Dickens,  Charles,  174. 

Diet,  145. 

Di[Tercntin.  68. 

Dingbat,  li>6. 

Dingswizzled,  197. 

Dinked,  195. 

Diitkunabulum, 219. 

Dinky.  169. 

Piphu  ro(7(i>i:.<i.<,  117. 

Diplomacy,  265. 

Diplomatics,  73,  75. 

Di.'^('onciirit.<ta>t,  100. 

Pi.<ntiiifii.<iii' ,  102. 

"  Disgrnntled,"  120. 

Disner,  61. 

Diiiplaced  stress,  85. 

Di><tinctio>iar!/,  255. 

Dirina  Conimedia,  The,  30. 

Dix,  Dorothy,  251. 

Dockage,  131. 

Dodderig.  4. 

Dodolga,  4. 

Dodunk,  198. 

BoUphin,  101. 

Donga,  55. 

Dooming-board,  132. 

Doran,  Edwin  W.,  235. 

Dorp,  55. 

Dother,  4. 

Douglass.  William,  128. 

Do-nps,  197. 

Dressmaker,  132. 

Drift,  55. 

Drvden,  John,  42. 

Dude,  3. 

Pudelkop,  4. 

Duer,  Caroline  K.,  144. 


Dunbar,  Paul  Laurence,  149. 
Dunch,  198. 
Dunne,  F.  P.,  170. 
Didiolatry,  251. 
Di/namic,  86. 
Dyrne,  14. 

Earle,  John,  156. 

East  Frisian  words,  4. 

East-side  (N.  Y.)  slang,  164, 184. 

Ece,  14. 

Edwards,  Louise  Betts,  253. 

Osman,  251. 
Effcminization,  115. 
Eggleston,  f]dward,  205. 

George  Cary,  158. 
Electioneering,  129. 
Elevator,  126. 
Elfscine,  14. 
Eliot,  Charles  William,  149. 

George,  34,  173. 
Elizabethan  words,  3. 
Elliptic  phrases,  202. 
Elshemus,  Louis  M.,  79. 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  25,  50, 

51,  186. 
Encoitntcrable,  258. 
Endi/minn,  19. 
English,  Thomas  Dunn,  79. 
Englishmen,  the   great  word- 
makers,  120. 
Entencephalic,  137. 
Episodic.  115. 
Eraoomplt,  144. 
Erne,  Lord  64. 
Ernst,  C.  W.,  126. 
EntnoQraplii/,  73. 
Ethergraphti,  266. 
Ethero(jrap'/u/,  266. 
Eutmpelin,  68. 
Eutrapelous,  68. 
Eventless,  80. 
Even/-dai/  English,  34.  230. 
Evolution  of  language,  237. 
E.vactarian,  252. 
E.ti'e»tric,  80. 
Expellent,  100. 
Express,  128. 

Factory,  131. 

Fad.  205. 

Family  names,  57,  58,  59. 

Faunian,  93. 


INDEX. 


273 


Faust,  30. 

Fawcett,  Edgar,  SI. 
Foninology,  87. 
Ferris,  Mtirv  L.  D.,  143. 
Field,  Eugene,  21,  36. 
Filibuster,  GO. 
FiUphia,  141. 
Filofloss,  10. 
Fin  used  as  a  verb,  83. 
Finic,  252. 
Fireward,  132. 
Fiske.  Professor  John,  95. 
Flabbergasted.  203. 
Flaubert,  Gustave,  38,  39. 
ropuh'iit,  212. 
Floughs,  219. 

Flournoy,  Professor,  227. 
Fluotuaiin<r,  128. 
Flynt,  Josiah,  168. 
Folk-speech,  195. 
Fontein,  55. 
Ford,  James  L.,  209. 
Forlornitv,  253. 
Foster.  Hon.  John  W.,  265. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  37. 
Fraternia.  SS. 
Frau,  218. 

Frazer.  Dr.  Persifor.  70-77. 
Frederick  the  Great,  216. 
French  Revolution.  The.  6. 
Fvb.^ij.  207. 
Fudee.  38. 

'•  Fulsrence  "  used  as  a  noun,  93. 
Fulke,  Thomas,  6. 
Fuller,  Margaret.  110. 
Fnlmant,  112. 
Finnor.  219. 
Furqitiouf'.  102. 

Furness.  Dr.  Horace  Ho-ward, 
73,  74.  75. 

Gallaher.  Grace  Margaret,  207. 
•  raUeyied.  ICS. 
(^alloptious.  197. 
Gallowed.  219. 
Gau£r  Rule.  64. 
Garsrlv.  203. 

Garland,  Hamlin,  173.  189. 
Garrison,  Theodosia  Pickering, 
ia5. 

Gas.  256. 

Gates.  Professor  Elmer,  134. 
Professor  Louis  E.,  150. 

IS 


GoUin,  218. 

Gatilegreens,  219. 

Gemahlin,  218. 

Geminy,  103. 

Genet,  Citizen,  131. 

George  III.,  107. 

Gtrard,  M.,  54. 

Gtjrman  language,  the,  215, 217. 

Gerrymander.  178. 

Gignianilv,  262. 

Gilchrist,"  Mrs.,  208. 

Gilman,  Daniel  G.,  149. 

Ging,  14. 

Girdner,  Dr.  John  H.,  252,  261. 

Glabberiug,  184. 

Gladstone,  William  E.,  215. 

Glatiering,  184. 

GluQ,  212. 

GliiJcy,  212. 

Goethe  von,  Johanu  Wolfgang, 
103. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver.  38. 

GoUiwomblo^,  219. 

Goober-grubber,  198. 
t  Goodies,  132. 
i  Googoo,  62. 

1  Gordon,     Julien     (Mrs.     Van 
j  Renssalaer  Crugert,  2.53. 

I  Goss,  Rev.  Charles  Frederick, 
I  106. 

Gothamite,  2. 
'  Gmfiage.  116. 
,  Grdmmaphoiy,  72,  77. 
■  Graphnnatomy,  73. 

Graph  Uosophy,  73. 
i  Graphopheny,  73. 
'  Graphoplastir,  75. 

Graphoplaxy,  75. 

Graphopsyc'hology,  74. 

Gmphosc'opu,  73. 

Grav,  Thornas,  66. 

Great  Scott.  176. 

I  Greenough,    Professor    James 
Bradstreet,  43. 

Greeve.<',  219. 

GrieHet,  100. 

Grimlic,  14. 

Grimm's  Deutsche  Mythdogie,  4. 

Grubstake.  181. 

Grundv,  Mrs.,  63. 

Guide,"  82. 

Habberton,  John,  84. 


274 


INDEX. 


Hador,  14. 

Haire,  Robert  W.,  246. 

Hale,  Rev.  Edward  Everett,  107. 

Half- Gothic,  86. 

Halig,  14. 

Hamlet,  30,  182,  233. 

Hancock,  H.  Irving,  62. 

Hand-holds,  92, 

Handkerchiejiet,  100. 

Haps,  262. 

Harland,  Marion,  105. 

Harness,  128. 

Harris,  Joel  Chandler,  174. 

Harrison,  Mrs.  Burton,  150. 

Frederic,  221. 
Hart,  yir  Robert,  145. 
Harte,  Bret,  125,  173. 
Hartmann,  Dr.  Franz,  252. 
Hawthorne,  Julian,  218. 

Nathaniel,  37, 
Heading-up,  83. 
HeaUhology,  233. 
Heap-sight,  202,  203. 
Hello,  132. 
Help,  130. 
Hempl,    Professor    George,  84, 

194. 
Henderson,  William  J.,  96. 
Henry  VIII.,  174. 
Heredity  in  speech,  232. 
Heterophemy,  30,  71. 
Hewlett,  Maurice,  96. 
Hevlin's  Observations,  etc.,  7. 
Hideosities,  266. 
Higginson,      Thomas      Went- 

worth,  78. 
Hike,  Hiker,  Hiking,  62. 
Hill,  Professor  Adams  S.,  183, 

155. 
Hippopsean,  91. 
Hobos,  179. 

Hobson,  Lieutenant  R.  P.,  64. 
Hobsonization,  65. 
Hobsonize,  65. 
Hogo,  199. 

Holden,  Professor  E.  S.,  234. 
Holland,  130. 

Dr.  W.  J.,  187. 
Holt,  Henry,  262. 
Homeoidal,  111. 
Homeoidality,  111. 
Homer,  229,  280. 
Hooliganism,  64. 


Hoosier  dialect,  200,  202. 
Horace,  229,  230. 
Hornswaggled,  197. 
Hovey,  Richard,  22,  23. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  25,  88, 

147,  173,  254,  260. 
Hubbard.  Elbert,  111,  209. 
Huggernum  Buff,  198. 
Hughes,  Rupert,  104. 
Humbug,  178. 
Huneker,  James  G.,  96. 
Hunkersliding,  198. 
Hunt,  Leigh,  18. 
Hunter-brute,  123. 
Hustler,  163. 
Huxley,  Professor  T.  H.,  35,  41, 

67. 
Hydrogen,  5. 
Hyperpromethia,  137. 
Hypethral,  103. 
Hypnopompic,  138. 
Hypnotic,  etc.,  139. 
Hyslop,  Professor  James  H.,  68. 

Ideate,  123. 

Ideatia,  128. 

Iliad,  The,  30,  188. 

Immigrant,  129. 

Imp-gels,  84. 

Incompoop,  211. 

Indiana,  folk  speech  in,  200. 

Indocrat,  264. 

Indo-European,  18,  44. 
i  Infurled,  105. 

Ingersoll,  Ernest,  79. 
I  Innocentism,  116. 
"  Insinuendo,  102. 

Intern,  126. 
i  Inter-tillaqe,  116. 
I  Invedor,  219. 

Inwidda,  14. 

Ipecactus,  101. 

Irreluctant,  88. 

Irving,  Washington,  2. 

Isomodal,  96. 

Israelites,  The,  26. 

Italian  half-Gothic,  86. 

Jabberwock,  206. 

Jackson,  Edward  Payson,  141. 

Jamboree,  203. 

James,  Henry,  147,  207. 

Jo^m,  87. 


INDEX. 


275 


Jefferson,  Thomas,  131. 

Jejune,  61. 

Jiggumbob,  205. 

Jimmermerig,  205. 

Jobbernowl,  206. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  7,  8,  9, 10, 

30,  128, 156. 
Professor  William  Preston, 

157. 
Jones,  Sir  William,  44. 
Joubert,  Joseph,  48,  227,  228. 
Jours,  91. 
Juberous,  203. 
Jukes,  99. 
Jumpy.  207. 
Junius,  39. 
Juvenal,  179. 

Kabang,  196. 

Kachunck,  196. 

Kaflop,  196. 

Kakistocracy ,  69. 

Kangarooster,  101. 

Kaslam,  196. 

Keats,  John,  19. 

Keeley.  John  W.,  1. 

Keith,  B.  F.,  183. 

Kellner,  61. 

Kibosh,  209. 

King,  General  Charles,  146. 

Kipling.  Rudvard,  38,  39,  52,  68, 

121,  173,  "211. 
Kittredge,     Professor    George 

Lyman,  43. 
Klip,  5-5. 
Kloof,  55. 
Kopje,  55. 
Kraal,  55. 

Krehbiel,  Henrv  E.,  96. 
Kroll.  Rev.  Anselm,  68. 
Kyle,  Dr.,  264. 

Laager,  55. 

Ladd,  Professor  George  Trum- 
bull, 123. 
Lalla  Bookh,  38. 
Lamb,  Charles,  39. 
Lampman,  Archibald,  122. 
Land  Leaguers,  the  Irish.  64. 
Landor,  Walter  Savage,  49,  94. 
Landscape-horticulture.  111. 
Latin,  words  from  the,  224,  247. 
" Laud"  used  as  a  noun,  140. 


Lavadan,  M.,  54. 
Lavoisieur,  M.,  5,  6. 
Layer  age,  116. 
Leqatioaers,  63. 
Lenard,  M.,  39. 
Lermontoff,  237. 
Lessless,  207. 

Lexicographer,  Johnson's  defi- 
nition of,  9. 
Liber,  ol. 

Liddell,  Professor  Mark  H.,231. 
Limbs,  132. 
LittlelA.^t,  90. 
Littre,  M.,  54. 
Loanor,  143. 
Loathy,  '2ldl. 
Lobscouse,  197. 
Lockwood,  Colonel  H.  C,  120. 

Ingersoll,  118. 
Lolly,  197. 
London  Academy,  211. 

Philological  Society,  3. 

Spectator,  120. 
Loomis,  Charles  Battel!,  87. 
Loper.  197. 
Loplollv,  196. 
Lot,  128. 

Louis  XIV.,  107. 
Louis  XV.,  56. 
Low  German  words,  4. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  103. 
Lumber,  128. 
Lyronym,  78. 

McCosh.  Dr.  James,  3-5. 
McKinlev.  William.  184. 
Mabie.  Hamilton  W..  28,  147. 
Macarthur,  Rev.  R.  S.,  67. 
Macaulav.  Lord  T.   B.,  31,  37, 

156;  2.30. 
Macchiavelli,  227. 
Macrobioty.  36. 
Madame  Bovary,  38. 
Mahan.  Captain  Alfred  T.,  80. 
Maitland.  J.,  60. 
Major,  Charles,  87. 
Mo'lfnlgence,  91. 
Mahavelins.  197. 
March.  Professor  F.  A.,  4,  242. 
Marconioraphy,  266. 
Marsh.  George  Perkins,  222. 
Mason.  Caroline  A..  88. 
Mather,  Increase,  129. 


276 


INDEX. 


Mathews,  Alfred,  263. 

Matross,  198. 

Matthews,  Frances  Aymar,  114. 

Professor   Brander,   2,   37, 
121,  145,  248,  249. 
Mealies,  55. 
Mediocrally,  262. 
Meeching,  196. 
Membrenate,  219. 
Merington,  Marguerite,  262. 
Merivale,  Herman,  179. 
Merrimac,  65. 

Merryweather,  F.  Somer,  36. 
Mesmer,  Friedrich  Anton,  139. 
Messian,  68. 
Metaphor,  the,  46. 
Metapharaphobia,  47. 
Methectic,  138. 
Metropoliarchy,  79. 
Mex,  62. 

Meynell,  Mrs.,  256. 
Mezieres,  M.,  54. 
Mezzofanti,  Cardinal,  vii. 
Mifflin,  Llovd,  90. 
Milton,  John,  221,  2^4. 
^Jiri(tgnos(ic,  35,  67. 
Misholler,  144. 
Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  98. 
M'm-h'm,  194. 
Moany,  89. 
Modig,  14. 
Moli^re,  52. 
Mommixed,  198. 
Monoideism,  139. 
Mono-ideology,  139. 
MonopoUan,  90. 
Monosyllables,  82. 
Montaigne,  186. 
Moore,  George,  189. 

Professor  Charles  H.,  149. 

Thomas,  38. 
More,  Hannah,  161. 
Morley,  Hon.  John,  31. 
Morpid,  219. 
Morton,  Thomas,  64. 
Mosey,  201. 

Mosso,  Professor  A.,  144. 
Mugwump,  178. 
MunKittrick,  R.  K.,  100. 
Murid,  219. 
Murray,  Dr.  James  A.  H.,  3,  4, 

60. 
Murth,  124. 


Mutoscope,  212. 
Muxed  up,  198. 
Myers,  F.  W.  H.,  135. 

Nadder,  255. 
Naperon,  255. 
Napoleon  I.,  59,  63,  217. 
Nek,  55. 

Neologisms,  78-160. 
Neologistically,  90. 
Neurohypnotism,  139. 
Neurypnology ,  139. 
Nevada,  slang  in,  181. 
Newyorkitis,  253. 
Nicholls,  George,  79. 
Nicholson,  Meredith,  202. 
Nicoll,  Dr.  W.  Robertson,  33. 
Noink,  197. 

Xomcn  clatologicalistical,  107. 
Nordau,  Max,  36. 
Norman-French,  33,  225. 
Norton,  Professor  Charles  E., 

145. 
Nouns,  50. 
Nuciculture,  118. 

Odyssey,  the,  30. 
Offscape,  118. 
Olericulture,  118. 
Onomatopoeia,  162. 
Opsomania,  141. 
Ord'narv,  201. 
O'Rell,  5lax,  142. 
Ornating,  253. 
Orts,  194. 
Osteopath,  35. 
Osteopathy,  35. 
I  Ostraca,  57. 

Oxford  Dictionary,  72, 126. 
Oxygen,  5,  6. 

Packet.  128. 
Padre  Bandelli,  28. 
Page,  Professor  Curtis  Hidden, 
102. 
Thomas  Nelson,  145. 
Pall  Mall  Magazine,  16. 
Palma,  A.  S.,  60. 
Pan,  55. 

Panxsthesia,  138. 
Panmnesia,  137. 
Pantata,  179. 
Paramnesia,  138. 


I 


INDEX. 


277 


Paris,  Matthew,  IM. 
Parker,  Gilbert,  151,  173. 
Paronyms.  38. 
Passel,  203. 

Patten,  Professor  Simon  N.,  69. 
Paul,  Jean,  30. 
Saint,  254. 
Pawky,  199. 
Peach,  181. 
Penandincompoop,  211. 
Pentecost,  Rev.  George  F.,  1-42. 
Perfunctory,  125. 
Pernicketty,  140. 
Perrv,  Bliss,  148. 
Peter  Bell,  27. 
Phaeton,  128. 
Pheiwgraphy,  73. 
Philippine  slang,  62. 
Phillips.  8. 
PfiilopoUst,  106. 
Philosography,  73. 
Phonetics,  vi,  243,  244,  245. 
Pidget,  219. 
Pitkin,  Helen,  110. 
Plasmenysis.  76. 
Pla^mograpjhy ,  73. 
Plass€Cpha7iy,  76. 
Plassmenyma,  73. 
Pla.i:sogrdphy,  73. 
Plassomenysis,  76. 
Plassopheny,  72,  77. 
Plato,  179. 
"  Plebisitary,"  120. 
Plur-anniial,  118. 
Plmioloqy,  36. 
Plutarch,  236. 
Poe.  Edsrar  Allan,  114. 
Poefhood,  103. 
Polaric,  90. 
Politethics,  81. 
Polysemia,  196. 
Pont,  55. 
Poort,  55. 
Pooster,  196. 

Pope.  Alexander,  3,  31, 156. 
Possumist,  254. 

Postgate,  Professor  J.  P.,  vi. 
Practiser,  261. 
Prang,  Louis,  132. 
Pratt,  C.  E.,  132. 
"Precise"  as  a  verb,  119. 
Precisionist,  105. 
Prefixes,  12, 13. 


Preaervnline,  251. 
j  Preterits  and  past  participles, 

241,  242. 
'  Preversion,  138 

Printery,  131. 
I  Procrastinative,  106. 

Proctor,  Bryan  Waller,  78. 

Prornnesia,  1.38. 
I  Promoters,  128. 

Propository,  96. 

Prosalim,  209. 

Provincialisms,  192-205. 

Psalms  of  David,  22. 

P^eudaleogmph,  lb. 

Pseudaleography,  75. 

Pseud-annual,  117. 

Psychology  in  language,  42,  43. 

Psycho-physiology,  139. 

Puccoon,  101. 

Piifliite,  113. 

Purkle,  219. 

Pushkin,  237. 

Putchiky,  198 

Putnam,  Ruth,  102. 

Quackenbos,    Professor    John 

Duncan,  141. 
Quassid,  207. 
Quern,  122. 
Quinnydingles,  212. 
Quotated,  79. 

Raddled,  219. 

Ranged  V,  101. 

Ralph,  Julian,  218. 

Rasped,  91. 

Ravid,  219. 

Read,  Thomas  Buchanan,  131. 

Reade,  Charles,  213. 

Real-estate,  131. 

Realf.  Richard,  27. 

Reckelsome,  102. 

Redingote,  101. 

Relationist.  157. 

Remington,  Frederick,  140. 

Renan,  M.,  46. 

Repolonization,  108. 

Reskv,  195. 

Resonant,  86. 

"  Restorator,"  129, 

Retrocngnition,  1.38. 

Review.  The  Quarterly,  19. 

Reynakaboo,  178. 


278 


INDEX. 


Rhematology,  vi. 

Rheine,  vi. 

Rhetoric,  23,  27. 

Rialto,  tlie  New  York,  183. 

Rideing,  William  H.,  149. 

Riley,  James    Whitcomb,  101, 

205. 
Roast'n  ear,  199. 
Roberts,  Charles  G.  D.,  151. 
Robins,  Elizabeth,  122. 
Rodgers,  Dr.  M.  M.,  118. 
Rof,  U. 

Rogers,  Henry,  224. 
Romeikiti!<,  111. 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  30. 
Roofer,  211. 

Roosevelt,  Theodore,  150. 
Roseboro,  Viola,  152. 
Rote,  198. 

Royal  Irish  Society,  7. 
"  Royal"  used  as  a  verb,  115. 
Ruh,  14. 
Rum,  127. 

Runkle,  Bertha,  189. 
Rusk  in,  John,  2,  209,  221. 
Russia,  illiteracy  in,  236. 
Rusticrata,  198. 

Saint-Beuve.  46, 114. 

Salammb6,  38. 

Saltus,  Edgar,  89,  253, 262. 

Sandal-wood  ij,  104. 

Sanscrit,  3. 

Savorsome,  98. 

"Savour"  as  an  active  verb, 

123. 
Scamuljugated,  197. 
Scencan,  61. 
Schelm,  61. 
Schiller  von,  Johann  Christoph 

Friedrich,  237. 
Schooner,  128. 
Seine,  14. 

Scollard,  Clinton,  89. 
Scopography,  73. 
Scott,  Dr.  C.  P.  G.,  4. 

General  Winfield,  176. 

Professor  Fred  Newton,  46. 

Sir  Walter,  176. 
Scrapple,  198. 
Screel,  212. 
ScrunQle,  212. 
Scudder,  Vida  D.,  150. 


Scuds,  198. 

Sea  power,  80. 

Seawell,  Molly  Elliot,  101. 

Seedage,  116. 

Sel,  14. 

Selectmen,  127. 

Sematics,  v,  11,  195. 

Separate  particles,  12. 

Sermonette,  123. 

Session,  198. 

Seton,  Ernest  Thompson,  123. 

Shakespeare,  2,  60,  94,  215,  233, 

234. 
Shampoodle,  100. 
Shattennent,  123. 
Sheldon,  Professor  Edward  S., 

4. 
Shelley,  P.  B.,  94. 
Shenanigan,  203. 
Shenstone,  William,  185. 
Sherman,  Ellen  Burns,  256. 
Sherwood,  M.  E.  W.,  149. 
'Sh-h  or  Ssh,  194. 
Shiftings  of  meaning  in  words, 

4,  5,  6. 
Shock,  196. 

Shute,  Professor  Samuel  M.,  13. 
Sib,  98. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  63. 
Silhouette,  56. 
Sill,  Dr.  Andrew  T.,  35. 
Silver  thaw,  198. 
Sinequanonymous,  212. 
Sinistro-eerebral,  137. 
Skeat,  Professor  Walter  W.,  4. 
Skedaddle,  206. 
Skinker,  61. 
Skipometers,  207. 
Slack  twisted,  199. 
Slambangaree,  101. 
Slang  in  general,  175. 

in  the  West,  181. 

of  English  sportsmen,  178. 

of  English  thieves,  177. 

of  sailors,  183. 
Slap-dasher,  105. 
Slather,  203. 
Sleigh,  127. 
Slob,  198. 
Sluit,  55. 
Smitch,  196. 
Smith,  Duncan,  262. 

F.  Hopkiuson,  150. 


INDEX. 


279 


Smith.  Goldwin,  151. 

Mile.,  228. 

Professor  Louis  W.,  233. 

Professor  William  B.,  Ill, 
Smylt,  14. 
Snack,  61. 
Snark,  206. 
Siiick-sn icking,  262. 
Sniping,  63. 
Snitch,  62. 
Snumble,  211. 
SoUet,  HX). 
Socdolager,  204. 
SocieMics,  260. 
Societology,  88. 
Society  of  American  Authors, 

70. 
Soldatesque,  253. 
So  long,  175. 
Songs  of  Solomon,  22. 
Sonorant,  84,  86. 
Sonoric,  84,  86. 
Sortment,  130. 

South  Africa,  words  from,  55. 
So  wage,  122. 
Spak,  197. 
Speisenfolge,  218. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  40,  47,  229. 
Spenser,  Edmund,  201. 
Sphinxy,  104. 
Spilth,  2-54. 

"  Spirit "  used  as  a  verb,  83. 
Spofford,  Harriet  Prescott,  154. 
Spo^h,  105. 
Sprachgefiihl,  43. 
Sprangle,  219. 
Spread,  5. 
Spruit,  .55. 
Spurtled.  2-53. 
Squeal,  181. 
Sqidnly,  219. 
Standard  Dictionary,  4, 105, 108, 

111,  118,  120,  215,  235. 
St.  Clair.  D.  F..  6-5. 
Stedman,  Edmund  Clarenee,78. 
Stephen,  Leslie,  9. 
Stercology, 118. 
Sterne,  Laurence,  40,  172. 
Stevenson,   Robert   Louis,   83, 

179. 
Stillyurds,  194. 
Stimpered,  219. 
Stimson,  Frederick  Jesup,  123. 


Stither-and-xpin,  219. 
Stockton,  Frank  R.,  148. 
Stoddard,  Richard  Henry,  147. 

William  O.,  106. 
Stodged,  198. 
Store,  130. 
Storiest,  261. 
Story,  W.  W.,  28,  233. 
Soul-drama,  102. 
Street  slang,  164-184. 
Strong,  Rev.  Augustus  H.,  87. 

Rev.  Josiah,  IW. 
Strut,  195. 

Stuart,  Ruth  McEnery,  106. 
Sturtevant,  Dr.  E.;;Louis,  118. 
Suffixes,  11,  12,  13,  14. 
Sugary,  131. 
Suink,  197. 
Summer  colt,  93. 
Sumner,  Professor  W.  G.,  88. 
Sun,  New  York,  124,  133. 
Supernurmal,  136. 
Swatch,  198. 

Swetchine,  Madame,  48. 
Swift,  101. 
Swinburne,  48. 
Swosh,  105. 
Synonyms,  33,  34,  35. 
Syntography,  267. 

Taal,  55. 

Tabloid,  10. 

Tackv,  196. 

Taine,  H.,  ai,  46. 

Taliesin,  22. 

Talkahility,  141. 

Talmage,  Rev.  T.  Dewitt,  233. 

Tannery,  131. 

Tantalize,   alleged    origin   of 

word,  266. 
Tan-toaster,  199. 
Tar  dies,  115. 

Tarkington,  Booth,  189. 
Tavlor,  Bavard,  24. 

'Rev.  Edward,  254. 
Team,  131. 
Teamster,  131. 
TelsestheHa,  1:35. 
Telepathy,  135. 
Telergy,  136. 

Tennessee,  dialect  in,  197. 
Terms  used  in  Wall  Street,  258, 

259,  260. 


280 


INDEX. 


Thackeray,  W.  M.,  201. 
Thanet,  Octave  (Alice  French), 

139. 
Thing-a-majig,  203. 
Thomas,  Edith  M.,  154. 

Isaiah,  131. 
Thompson,  Vance,  97,  98. 
Thon,  105. 
ThriUful,  123. 
Thud-thudding,  144. 
Thwing.  Major  Nathaniel,  133. 
Tilge,  212. 

Times,  New  York,  144. 
Tip-most,  93. 
Tod,  4. 

Togetherness,  143. 
Tolqual,  198. 
Tomlinson,  6. 
Tonist,  105. 
Tooke,  Home,  10. 
Tote,  200. 
Touristing,  107. 
Tow,  197. 

Townsend,  E.  W.,  170. 
Train,  Elizabeth  P.,  146. 
Ti-ansferred  stress,  85. 
Transients,  132. 
Traubel,  Horace  L.,  24. 
Trek,  55. 

Trench,  Archbishop,  190. 
TriUer-triller,  114. 
Troll,  104. 
Trone.  253. 
Tropologj%  38. 
True,  A.  C,  70. 
Tiiherosey.  104. 
Tudor  English  in  Boston,  127. 

■    Mary.  174. 
Titlkinghorni/,  104. 
Tundra,  59. 
Twain,  Mark,  124, 181. 
Twipgerv,  123. 
Twi'nk,  212. 
Tyler,   Professor   Moses   Coit, 

158. 
Typogram,  145. 
Typograph,  145. 
Typographer,  145. 

Uh-huh,  194. 

Uitlander.  5.5. 

Un,  12. 

Unavoidable,  law  of  the,  54. 


Unconstitutional,  129. 
Under,  12. 

Under doneness,  266. 
Undern,  122. 

Unimpressioned,  124. 

United  Statesman,  90. 

Univolism,  69. 

Unniched,  93. 

Unpretty,  106. 

Unthoughted,  93. 
■Unurns,  89. 

Usward,  262. 

Vagrom,  98. 

Vamoose,  202. 

Van  Dyke,  Professor  Henry,  46, 

81,  141. 
Van  Rensellaer,  M.  K.,  101. 

Mrs.  Schuvler,  55. 
Van  Zile,  Edward  S.,  148. 
Varietal-difference,  118. 
Varro,  Marcus  Terentius,  31. 
Veldt,  55. 
Velleity,  69. 

Vermilye,  Kate  Jordan,  143. 
Versalehe,  209. 
Viceversation,  104. 
Viewpoint,  82. 
Virgil,  52. 
Vitascope,  212. 
Vivic,  84. 
Vividity,  96. 
Vlei,  55. 

Vocabulary,  234,  235. 
Volume,  57. 

Wac,  14. 
Wagon,  130. 

Wal-e field,  Tlie  Vicar  of,  38. 
Walking-side,  101. 
Wallace,  General  Lew,  149. 
Walpole,  Horace,  188. 
Walsh,  William  S.,  142. 
Waralogne,  212. 
War-farer,  89. 

Warner,  Charles  Dudley,  151. 
Wafchpoint,  82. 
Water-faUy,  81. 
Waterman,  Nixon,  254. 
Watrous,  E.  F.,  59. 
Waxed-e72d,  101. 
Wax-minster,  101. 
Wax  tapir,  101. 


i 


INDEX. 


281 


Weatherlv,  Dr.,  204. 
Webster,  Noah,  .53,  190. 
Webster's   Dictionary,  93,  161, 

201. 
Wedgwood,  Heusleigh,  60. 
Weib,  218. 
Weirditles,  140. 
Wells,  Carolyn,  265. 
Wendell,  Professor  Barret,  146. 
Weor,  14. 

Weyman,  Stanley  J.,  32. 
Whang-doodle,  203. 
Wharton,  Edith,  46,  2-56,  2-57. 
Wheeler,   Professor  Benjamin 

Ide,  48. 
Whetherell,  Caroline,  206. 
Whethering,  143. 
Whifflement,  212. 
Whipple,  E.  P..  48. 
White,  Richard  Grant,  34,  36, 

41,  51,  66,  71,  103,  222,  230, 

246. 
Whiting,  Lilian,  151. 
Whitman,   Walt,  22,  23,  24,  25, 

175. 
Whitney,    Professor    William 

Dwight,  4,  35,  234. 
Wideopenness,  181. 


Wife,  209,  210. 

Wiggin,  Kate  Douglass,  149. 

"Wild-cat"  banking,  126. 

WUd-flowerij,  81. 
Wilhelm  11.,  216.  217,  218. 
Wilkins,  Mary  E.,  1-54,  173. 
Will  and  doom,  132. 
Wilson,  Robert  Burns,  123. 
Winthrop,  John,  129. 
Wistor,  Owen,  154. 
Wood,  Henry,  262. 
Woodberry,  Professor   George 

E.,  148. 
Worcester's  Dictionary,  80, 154, 
157,  218. 

Words  and  their  Uses,  36,  230. 

Words  and  their  Ways  in  English 

Speech,  43. 
Words  once  obsolete,  6,  7,  8. 
Wordsworth,  William,  27. 

World-beaidy,  103. 
Wright,  Rev.  Alfred  A.,  255. 
Wuzzled,  198. 
Wyclif  de,  John,  242. 

Yearnful,  19. 

Zarp,  55. 
Zootechny,  70. 


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